The Uncharted Adventures of Sandro and His Miniature Nutcase
by Kyn
Summary: Parenting chaos ensues as the holidays hit! Between Raphael's efforts to control his temper, Donatello over-analyzing everything, Michelangelo loving on everyone, and Leo's hesitant forays into mentorship, hopefully at least one of these children will turn out sane and emotionally stable by the end!
1. Halloween - Part 1

"Can I _please_ pass out candy this year!?" a sleepy-eyed Michelangelo was begging as he clung to Donnie's leg like a toddler.

Donatello hobbled determinedly forward, dragging hundreds of pounds of 'little' brother along as he aggressively strove to reach his morning coffee. "I already said it's a needless exposure of one of our best disguises-"

"At a house no one knows is ouuurrsss...!" Michelangelo crowed, head thrown back to wail like a child.

"Aren't you supposed to be picking up our guest at this hour!?" Donnies were best left undisturbed pre-caffeination.

"I sleeeptt innnn...!" Mikey wailed. "Leo didn't wake me upp, he just weeennntttt insstteaaaaddd!"

"That's no one's fault but yours!"

"It was costume-induced-depression, yo, not my faaaulllt!"

As ridiculous and over-the-top as this conversation was, the family's youngest member found it hard to laugh: Hamato Sandro sighed and sat down on the back of the couch. Eventually, he flopped back upside down onto the cushions.

Halloween was coming up on Wednesday, and Sandro was understandably nervous.

See, it was traditional for the turtle family to head out to Casey Jones' house for a big Halloween party. Uncle Donnie and Uncle Leonardo were always the first ones on the premises, to get the cloaking field activated over the meager backyard, and to properly trap the premises.

And, for the purpose of that party, Sandro was worried about _his costume_ , which Wildcard hadn't made a peep about in over a week. Was it too much to expect a status report?! Was it going to be late? Would it be on time? Was there _any_ chance in hell they might convince his parents to let him out trick-or-treating? That'd be the first time ever! She couldn't just show up at the last second with everything, if that was her plan! Mom, in particular, was going to need some time to dwell on the idea before she gave her 'okay!'

Sandro rubbed his face with both hands. Having effectively five "parents" was a bit much to deal with sometimes.

Raphael looked up from where he'd been packing alcohol mixers. The actual alcohol would get picked up en-route to the party, along with copious amounts of ice, because apparently cold alcohol was better or something like that. Sandro wasn't an expert. "Ya look stressed," Raphael noted. "Got somethin' on ya chest?"

Sandro stuck out his tongue in a mute 'Blah,' but then decided maybe he _liked_ feeling grumpy in a juvenile way over completely harmless stuff, instead of getting wrecked by anything more serious. "Nothing major this time." He looked over at his father, who was raising a scaly brow like he wasn't sure whether to let it drop. Sandro grinned. "Promise."

Raphael reached over and tugged on the ties of his bandanna! Then he went back to packing mixers. Sandro watched with a giddy smile probably more appropriate to a kid half his age, unable to articulate how... _bubbly_ he felt, actually getting some kind of _affection_ from his father again. Sandro prayed things didn't go backwards. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe the truth was he'd been in some kind of protracted fight with his parents for over a year, and it had finally ended.

The front door swung open. "Sandro!" Miniature Chaos Incarnate bellowed as she entered. "Time to break out the SFX supplies!"

"YES!" Sandro roared with a clap, before momentarily being stuck upside down because he was top heavy and his shell and gravity were working against him here. Instead of sitting back up, he rolled off the couch and bounced around to join her. "Finally! You've got everything!?"

"That is correct!" Wildcard/Ana/Miniaturized Nonsense/The New Family Maniac announced in her dynamic hero's pose, with a duffel bag strapped across her chest. Leonardo entered far less explosively behind her, and quietly closed the door. "I even have a _full costume._ Mikey snuck me some family fabric patterns and Dad put me to work all week." She patted her duffel bag victoriously.

"You made _clothing_ for me!?" Sandro cackled, trying to get in to that duffel bag early. Wildcard had been trying to dress him since she'd met him, and he didn't know whether to be eager or terrified.

"Shoo, shoo, shoo, don't give away the surprise!" she laughed, shoving at his plastron. "If it doesn't fit, we might have to get your _seamstress_ involved, and then I might start laughing uncontrollably, so let's hope I followed all Dad's instructions correctly!"

Leonardo came up and coughed politely behind her. "Your shoes, _Kinpōgekun."_

"What? Oh!" Wild recalled those were supposed to be left by the side of the door, as opposed to dragging raw sewage germs all over the house. "Woopsie!" She hopped on a foot at a time to remove them, and filed them in the shoe rack.

Sandro helped her balance somewhat unnecessarily and asked: "And do you have-?"

"Yes _I do,"_ she growled with a haughty lift of her chin and grinning eyes. "And you're going to have to not smile _at all_ while I'm applying it. I also picked up two extra tubes of full cover foundation just in case, and fresh fake eyelashes, and there are these henna tattoo styled eyebrows I want to give a shot because it'll speed things up. It's still going to take like two hours to apply. Are you ready for a commitment of that level!? We need to _test everything!_ "

"I will be a _saint_ ," the family's tiniest turtle gushed, nearly hopping in place.

"Ya picked up _what_?" Raphael asked from the couch.

"That's about how long breakfast is going to take to be ready with this _moron_ on my foot!" Donatello was roaring like a dinosaur after gulping coffee straight from the pot. "I stayed up _all night_ and he was supposed to-!"

Wildcard leaned back from the surprisingly draconic genius and glanced over at Sandro as if she were asking 'Is this normal for him?!'

"Come on!" San urged her towards the hallway so they could get the other supplies out of the lab and hopefully not block up the family bathroom for any longer than was absolutely necessary.

"No one peek!" Wildcard hollered back across her shoulder. "Nobody but Mikey, he's special!"

"Woo!" fist-pumped an Orange Turtle from where Donatello was trying to pry him off with a Bo as if it were a crowbar.

"Hey, wait a sec-" Raphael called, rising from the couch in confusion, but, nope, Sandro and Wild were already gone.

* * *

Donatello was a little calmer with half a pot of coffee in him and had put together a rudimentary breakfast for his family. Michelangelo was pouting and bombarding him with puppy faces from across the table, which Donnie was affecting not to notice out of principle.

"Has anyone seen the kids?" April asked as she came in the room, tying up her hair with a scrunchy. "Anastasia's here, right?"

April was probably the only person who still referred to their tiny guest by her given name but, to be fair, April was something of the family normality anchor. To everyone else in that little girl's life, she was Mini-Meme, Mouse, She-Casey, Loudmouth, Arson-Risk, Dear-God-No!, _Kinpōgekun,_ Squirt and/or simply 'Wildcard.'

"They disappeared into the bathroom about an hour ago," Michelangelo mumbled glumly.

April paused, eyes widening in confusion and some trepidation. "To...gether...?" she asked, because these _were_ two fourteen year old children, after all.

"Well," Donatello growled, "seeing as they first fetched a wig and quite a thick purse of makeup, I'm going to have to assume they are _not_ having sex on the sink, and are instead playing dress-up with one other. Ala Michelangelo in the Salsa Dress."

"Oh!" April dropped her hands, instantly relieved.

Raphael, who had been a little confused about what he'd previously overheard but not entirely alarmed, suddenly whipped around to stare at Donatello with an expression of utter and unadulterated horror. For a moment he just sat there, reeling. By the look on his face, they might as well have assumed his entire life was flashing before his eyes. Or, at least, traumatized memories of Mikey in Drag.

Then Raphael stood up with a sharp scrape of kitchen chair on tile flooring, grabbing at the table with a clear attack vector in the direction of the bathroom, as if he needed to get there in under five seconds to stop the world from imploding.

"Ahh!" Mikey cried out, scrambling out of his chair to intercept. "Raphael! Don't!"

"Get outta mah way!" Red Turtle wheezed, like he'd been hit in the solar plexus, even though Mikey was just hanging on to his shell.

Leo stood blinking in the kitchen like a deer in headlights for a moment, before frowning and striding forward to where his two fire-banded brothers were wrestling. "Raphael, if your son wants to play 'dress-up,' regardless of reason—be it be for Halloween or merely for fun—on what grounds do you presume to stop him?"

"GET OUTTA MAH WAY!" Red Turtle roared, throwing Mikey down with an elbow to the face.

Leo abandoned his breakfast in alarm, diving to slam Raphael into the wall and protect the children.

"Raphael!" April protested. "There's nothing wrong with a boy trying out a wig-!"

Expletives filled the air at such a volume and fury that April momentarily leaned backwards, blinking rapidly. Then she scowled, pushed up her sleeves, and stalked up to the pile of turtles to begin a beat-down.

Donatello smile cruelly over his coffee, diabolically pleased. This was Purple's reward for Mikey hanging all over him all morning.

* * *

The sound of the bathroom door swinging open made every scale on Raphael's shoulder and arms stand on end, and he shot Michelangelo and Donatello dirty looks. "I can't believe you all actually made me agree ta dis," he groused bitterly.

"Oh, chill, you didn't agree to anything," Donatello snarked back. "Michelangelo and Leo merely sat on you until your wife successfully shamed you into silence."

"Fuckin' exactly."

"Raph, shush," April warned, because Sandro might be able to hear them already, and their son had been very forward with talking to them about a lot of very sensitive topics lately. The last thing they wanted to do was 'hurt' him over something so ridiculous.

"Raphael," Leonardo sighed, "if your son was inspired by Michelangelo's dress prank, there is nothing wrong with that, and-"

"Stuff it Fearless, ya've said it six times, and you, Mike, Ah'ma take ya head and stuff it down-"

Leonardo went slack beside him for half a second and then hit him with an elbow so hard Raphael nearly stumbled.

"What!?" Raphael snapped at him, and then noticed Leonardo's wide-eyed stare. Oh boy. Raphael dared to look at the figures approaching them. What he saw made his shoulders uncurl and his hands drop to his side. He docked his head.

"So," a handsome, six-foot, and completely human looking boy greeted them in explanation, wearing Chinese styled clothing that looked about appropriate for Lu Xun or Liu Bei, from _The Romance of the Three Kingdoms._ "I cannot open my mouth more than about two centimeters without risking breaking the illusion, but the whole thing's designed to be worn with a scarf and potentially a hood for that reason. We, um, we originally figured it out as a sort of fail safe."

What looked like completely normal lips were parting and curving softly over what appeared to be normal teeth but obviously couldn't be. (Right?)

April stood there in shock for a second and then put a hand over her mouth, and her eyes went glossy.

"Holy schnickerdoodles," Donatello blinked rapidly. "The plaster cast. I didn't think... Wow."

"The plaster cast!" Wildcard agreed, unnecessarily streaked with makeup beside him. "It's my most masterful application of foam latex to date! It's covering his snout and beak—you're probably going to need to feed him by protein smoothie or something, I forgot he'd need to eat. Also remind me to buy contact solution for him, I totally forgot."

"This is better than food," Sandro growled happily, the bridge of his nose wrinkling very slightly with his enthusiasm. Suddenly he had his mom's nose, and her brown eyes. He looked human, he looked like a half-Asian human boy. He had thin exercise gloves on to hide the skin color of his hands. He lifted them up to tighten his topknot, and there was nothing about it, _nothing,_ which gave away that it was a wig. Nothing about the prosthetic ears looked fake, it all fit.

Raphael moved first. He crossed the floor and came up to Sandro, lifting his hands to cup and touch hesitantly at this new and yet eerily familiar face. He brushed his knuckles against the prosthetic nose and ears, trying to find the difference in texture. The smooth cake of makeup made it almost imperceptible. Stunned, Raph touched the crease of the lip and Sandro parted his beak a little more to show off the blacked-out ridges of it behind ceramic gloss, proving that this was, indeed, only a clever use of foam, latex, and paint, and not some kind of crazy mutagen transformation.

"Holy shit," Raphael murmured, a giddy smile stretching his mouth wide. "Holy _shit_. That... that wantin' ta 'feel normal' bit you was talking about, you don't do things halfway, do ya?"

"I have a nutcase to help me," Sandro said smugly. "Try to find another girl who can talk a dude raised by _you_ into entering a makeup boutique with her." He shoved his dad's shoulder. "Whole time I was thinking 'Raphael would hang himself if he found me here. No questions asked, just dead.'"

Raphael busted out laughing. "I-that- _that's_ what ya was thinkin'?"

"The whole time," Sandro moaned. "Hemmed up at a dumpster as she smeared peach on me. 'I am an embarrassment to the family, I am letting a girl put makeup on me, can I imagine telling Dad, hey Dad, I sat still for an hour while someone penciled on eyebrows for me,'" Sandro shook his head. "Then she showed me the end, and then I'm like fuck you Dad, I look smokin' hot, you aren't taking this from me cause it's girly or whatever."

Raphael kept laughing and hugged him.

"So!" Wildcard grinned toothily up them. "Can he go trick or treating with me for Halloween!?"

"What!?" April burst, but then she, too, had to come forward and have a look at her absolutely handsome boy, because this was the closest she and Raphael would ever get to seeing what their kid would have looked like if he'd turned out human, and much as they loved him exactly the way he was, there was still just something amazing about that.

* * *

[Author's Note:] This story is actually a sequel! If you'd like to jump back and read more, click my name and look for the story "Clown Girl and Ninja Turtle."


	2. Halloween - Part 2

[Author's Note] if a few characters seem to have suspiciously familiar names, blame Mikey. He named them.

* * *

Four, enormous turtle mutants stood around the kitchen of that modest suburban house in lower Greenville where Casey Jones had elected to settle down to raise Shadow. All were in various state of camouflage, and engaged in preparatory tasks. They'd arrived early, all of them, with the sun still hanging above the horizon outside. A fifth and smaller turtle—their child—waited eagerly between them. He was the subject of their military-grade nervousness.

"Perimeter cameras are clear," Donatello continued to report with a swipe of his holographic wrist bracer displays, as Leonardo placed the finishing ornamental touches on two silver spray-painted foam swords. Each fake weapon contained an actual tonfa in it's composition, which could be removed with a firm twist in the event of an emergency.

They were all worried. Worried and _eager,_ like they'd be somehow be vicariously succeeding at some personal, life-long wish through _him_.

"Shit that is _crazy,_ " Casey marveled approvingly, leaning over as he got a good, long look at Sandro's spectacular 'Halloween costume.' "Who are you supposed to be, by the way? Looks awesome!"

"Thanks! You wouldn't know the character," Sandro absolved, talking carefully so as not to stretch or pull his prosthetic 'mask.'

"You don't even look like the same _person_ ," little Shadow Jones complained, because she was quite fond of how different and scary her turtle family members looked.

"Sure he does," Michelangelo snickered as he tugged on his nephew's hair. "Hey, yo, remember not to eat any candy prematurely! It has to be inspected for poison, right D?"

"Okay, first of all," Donatello preemptively forbade, "candy inspection is not an excuse for you to _eat_ half his spoils, Mike. Secondly he can _barely_ open his mouth, if you've forgotten."

"Don't worry, I'll test it for him!" Shadow quipped mischievously as she slipped on her white Storm wig which, in contrast to Sandro's black hair, did not look even remotely real.

Raphael stepped forward, leaning over with a safety pin and ducking to reach underneath the heavy green cape he'd rigged up on wire to 'flow' enigmatically behind Sandro. This was an extra but unneeded layer of obfuscation. Sandro's shell hugged tighter against the profile body than his relative's did, and Wildcard had chosen thick fabrics for the design, mimicking a video game rendition of the character so everything looked extra big and imperious. It had only taken a little bit of trimming the inner layers to render the shell invisible.

Leonardo presented Sandro with both finished 'swords,' and Sandro spent a moment re-familiarizing himself with them, and how to get the tonfa loose if necessary.

"Everyone stick closely to their part of the plan," Leo then intoned. "And yes, I do mean _you_ , Michelangelo. We have no reason to believe the Foot know anything about Sandro or about this location. The last thing we want to do is make a scene being overly protective and tip them off."

The doorbell rang, and Casey straightened with a frown. "Ape and the girl aren't due for another fifteen minutes. Right?" he asked, and more than one turtle was impressed he hadn't just laughingly strolled up to the door, thrown it open, and extended a beer to whomever might have been beyond. When it came to keeping his daughter safe and secret from the Foot, Casey could be a different person.

"Right." Donatello was peering thoughtfully at his display. A grin overtook his face. "Oh, we _definitely_ know who this is!" He looked up. "You can let them in."

Whelp, that was good enough for Casey, who—despite the trepidation and tension displayed by the other three turtles—shrugged and sauntered up to the door to find out what sort of unexpected guests he had that fine October 31st. The first thing he did was offer a beer. Mr. Visitor took the beer. That was also good enough for Casey, who called, "C'mon in!" and rejoined the turtles.

Yet another absolutely enormous burly dude stepped in to a kitchen that wasn't really meant for so many seven-foot persons. He was easily as big as Raphael, and concealed in a very familiar fashion with winter clothing that wasn't quite justified by the cool autumn air. With his head tucked down and his hood lowered, he might have gone unrecognizable half a minute longer—if not for the tiny quadruplets following him like a train of ducklings, each only three feet tall, and wearing matching winter coats in lavender, pink, baby blue, and yellow.

" _Leatherhead_!" Michelangelo realized with a start, sniffing at the air to be sure. "Girls! Do you recognize me!?"

Peep? Peep!

A chorus of delighted peeps and growls exploded from the duckling daughters, and then four tiny children had pounced upon Michelangelo and were hanging off every part of him, growling and purring and squeaking and rubbing themselves all over him like monkey cats instead of reptiles.

"ITS A HALLOWEEN MIRACLE!" Orange Turtle sobbed as he fell back onto the counter and snuggled with four alligator children.

"Oh _no_ ," Sandro lamented as Shadow rushed past him to see the kids. "I'm going to look like a stranger to them."

Leatherhead paused in pulling down his hood. "Is that... _Sandro_?" he disbelieved, and then untucked his snout and leaned closer to inhale.

Sandro perked up. "Yes sir!"

Sniff. Snifff. Snniiiiifff. Leatherhead leaned back. "That is positively uncanny..." he assessed.

Sandro beamed. Raphael started laughing and slapped Leatherhead on the back. Donatello and Leo both greeted him, and their Halloween party grew just a little bit larger.

.

* * *

'Ding-Dong' went the bell, and this time it was the at the appropriate time for April and Wildcard to be arriving by. The two of them entered, April wearing a black wig and tucking away sunglasses to keep her identity undercover, and Wildcard wearing a white hoodie over whatever boxy sort of costume she'd elected to wear.

"We got your call," Wildcard reported, holding a very large crate of meat over her shoulder. "Did we get enough extra hamburger? What happened, do we have guests? Did a cooler break? Did-!" She went silent, staring past Raphael to where four miniature albino alligators were blinking in confusion at an extremely well-disguised Sandro.

"Baby Toothy-Rawrs!" Wildcard squealed.

Mikey looked towards her. "I know, right!?"

"Did da Mouse insist on carrying dis?" Raphael asked of April as he levered the beef off of a girl who only came up to his hip. Wild, of course, lit out like a firecracker from under the weight to go join the party.

"Her exact words were that it was an 'important opportunity through which to display her machismo,'" April confirmed.

Raphael only grinned to himself, like he thought that was twice as fantastic as it was absurd.

April shook her head and sighed in bemusement.

"They look like Shiny Salazzles!" Wildcard was squealing hysterically.

"Oh my god," Donatello apparently agreed because he was groaning. "They _do._ "

* * *

"Alright, ya kids are gonna be basically walkin' on ya own," Raphael reminded them. "Ya do _exactly_ da route we have planned and then ya skedaddle ya asses back straight here, got it? Shadow, you's the Queen of dis neighborhood, you keep an eye out dat the three of ya don't 'accidentally'go too far."

"Aye-aye!" Shadow saluted.

" _Kinpōgekun,"_ Leonardo said. "You will adhere to the rules as we have set them out?"

"Yeesss Sseeennnseeeii," Wildcard droned. "Or I end up in _Hashi_ until Thanksgiving's over and don't get to meet anybody..."

"Exactly," Blue Turtle agreed without pity.

"We'll be on surveillance from back here," April explained with a pat on Donatello's shoulder. "And Casey will be parked out on the cul de sac in the truck, so you won't have far to go if something unexpected happens."

"Why can't the girls come?" Shadow whined with a gesture towards where four tiny alligators with color-coded kerchiefs were watching them curiously. "They know how to be stealthy."

"Because that is an uncalculated risk we did not have time to plan for," Leo answered.

"Also, they, uh, they _squeak_ when they get excited," Sandro reminded Shadow.

"Yo, Mini," Michelangelo tugged at her sleeve from where he was getting dolled up in his King Kong costume to hand out candy. "What's _your_ costume?"

"Ooh. I almost forgot," she unzipped her hoodie. "Nice save, Mom! Thanks! I picked it up at the store before coming over—check this out!"

'Mom?' Leatherhead visibly wondered.

"You were at a sewing machine for me for _a week_ ," Sandro asked, "and walked in a dime-a-dozen Halloween store as an afterthought at the very last possible second to buy something for your-?"

But Wildcard had just revealed she was wearing green tabi, skin-tight green fabric, brown knee pads and elbow pads, and a fake yellow and brown foam shell. "Why yes, Princess," she chirped dutifully as she kicked off her baggy pants and rolled them up. "That was the only way I could excuse this as an 'impulse buy' despite scoping it out weeks ago!"

"Ya fekkin didn't," Raphael muttered in disbelief.

"Oh my _god_ ," Sandro croaked in disbelief. "You _did."_

Shadow and Casey busted out laughing.

"Hmm," said Leonardo.

Leatherhead raised a scaly brow and looked in bafflement over at Donatello, who remarked, "In retrospect I feel we should have seen this coming. She's-um, well, I'll fill you in later."

"Oh-Em-Jee," Michelangelo uttered, grabbing at her with both (gorilla-gloved) hands. "Mini! Mini this is very important! _What color did you buy!?"_

"The red and purple ones were sold out!" Wildcard roared irrepressibly, as if this meant everything had gone according to plan. "And so were all the fake katanas!" She whipped out over sized foam-padded nanchaku and an orange bandanna and held them high. "Economics made the decision for me! I am Mini-Mikey!"

Michelangelo shrieked triumphantly, pounced upon her, and scooped her off the ground and whirled her around. "MIniii-meemmmee!" he squealed and she laughed hysterically into him and hugged him tight around the neck and kicked her feet. "I loooovveee youuuuu!"

His enthusiasm got them swarmed by tiny alligators again.

* * *

"Hurry _up_!" Shadow insisted, grabbing both older kids' arms and yanking on them. "We're going to get less candy! You dorks are hopeless." She turned around and ran ahead, apparently already forgetting she was Sandro's chaperone. That was okay; Wild was an old pro at turtle safety.

"Are you going to talk to me?" she asked as she tied her orange bandanna on, amused by his glare.

Sandro scoffed, refusing to look at her. "I can't believe," he growled, "that you are actually going as _a turtle._ "

She turned her nose up to him. "Oh yeah? _I_ can't believe _you're_ going as _a human_."

Sandro thought about that. He thought about it for a long moment as they went up the driveway and stood in line behind kids of various shapes, sizes, and levels of costume quality. Then he snickered, and grinned and straightened up again. "Okay, you totally got me there. Touche. I won't complain."

"Dat's my San-san," Wildcard cooed, tapping him on his prosthetic nose.

Sandro lowered his head out of reflex as they reached the house, and then suddenly he was in front of a total stranger who was complementing his and 'his sister's' costume and giving them a handful of Mini Snickers a peice. His throat locked up as he looked this stranger _straight in the eyes,_ with his face fully exposed, and they only smiled back at him.

No fear. No, 'Ah, a Monster!' No, 'Aliens!' or 'Dear God, what is WRONG with that boy!?'

His heart was racing and there was a slight quiver to his steps as he followed Wildcard away from the house. Shadow was waiting for them with crossed arms, and angry glare, and a pillowcase that apparently had way too little chocolate in it for her liking. By the nearness of Mr. Jones' pickup truck, he'd driven near to have some words with her out the car window.

"Don't worry!" Wildcard drawled, "C'mon! Let's go to the next house Mrs. Sulky, Sansan just needed a minute or two to warm up. He's new at this! Remember?"

"Ugh. It's _so easy,_ " Shadow said with a toss of her head as she headed towards the next house with a flip of her pillowcase over her shoulder like it needed to become a big bag of money stolen from a bank. "Come on slowpokes!"

"Eight-year-olds; so much attitude," Wildcard chirped mischievously to Sandro, and they hurried after her.

They got to the second house, said their 'Trick or Treat!' gave thanks for their chocolates, and cut across the lawn with Shadow to appease their tiny moody matron. They were just about to walk up to the next house when they were suddenly confronted by a line of four tiny people.

"GASP," Wildcard gasped. "Wait a minute, how'd they escape from under the eyes of all the parents? They aren't ninja-babies, are they? Donnniiieee. Your algorithm needs work."

All four girls were wearing their hoods up. All four were also wearing masks partially over top of the hoods. Unicorn masks: A purple unicorn mask, a pink one, a blue one, and a yellow one. These masks looked to have originally been white and made of thick, sculpted, recycled paper, and were now colored in with crayon and glued with glitter and yarn in disorganized scribbles and chaos.

"This was not in the plan," Sandro said.

"Hey slow-!" Shadow cut off and hurried back to them, and stared down in disbelief at their four tiny unicorns, all of whom had apparently procured empty pillowcases and were holding them out exactly the way they saw every other child doing. "Oh no. What do we do?"

"We wing it," Wildcard said.

"Noooooo," Sandro grieved. "We can't wing it. They'll never trust us outside again. This is our _maiden voyage,_ Wild..."

"Well the parents would have called us if they knew what to do," Shadow said, looking hesitantly at her phone. "Maybe they haven't noticed? Maybe they're panicking?"

"Trust _me_ , I have a plan," Wildcard said, and then looked at each and every girl. "You have to be _completely silent_ , okay? Otherwise Daddy'll get in trouble."

Sandro gulped, lifted up a gloved finger in front of his face, and said, "Shhhh," since Wild was apparently forgetting these kids were toddlers.

All four girls lifted up a single gloved finger in front of their faces and, simultaneously (and slightly creepily) said 'shhhhhhhhh!'

"Good enough for me!" Wildcard said with an upraised hand. "Follow me and don't fall behind Sandro! Aaaand _march!"_ she lead the way and, well, the kids followed, shuffling along upon their itty bitty toddler legs in their unicorn masks with pillowcases held out and open in front of them.

* * *

"Trick-or-treeattt!" Wildcard belted out as they reached the doorway, and Sandro and Shadow belatedly remembered to chime in, too. Wild smiled genuinely, Sandro just tried not to break out sweating, and Shadow smiled exactly like she'd been caught with an entire empty bag of Oreos in her bedroom and was trying to make up a story that didn't begin and end with 'I ate all of them.'

They stood over their gaggle of toddlers, but went almost entirely unnoticed because the kindly-faced neighbor-lady was too busy oohing and aahing over the four adorable pudgy little girls.

"They're our cousins!" Shadow blurted unnecessarily, because it wasn't important to explain why four equally sized adorable toddlers were with you when everyone was happy to focus on how adorable they were.

"We're still trying to teach them to say 'thank you,'" Sandro whimpered. "They're shy."

And that was perfectly okay.

A piece of candy went into each bag, which the girls watched with rapt attention, and then, without any further explanation from the older kids being necessary, all four girls tottered back away again after Wildcard, totally sure of themselves, and hilariously good at being ducklings. The fourth one—Applejack—nearly tripped, and Sandro dove forward to catch her and to scoop her back up and put her back on her feet.

"You need to learn to lie better," Wildcard called back in a loud conspiratorial whisper to Shadow.

"Okay!" Shadow agreed this was probably a necessary life skill.

"Pay more attention to the kids!" Sandro rebuked Wildcard scathingly. "If one of them is about to fall or bonk into someone, _tell me!_ And don't go so fast! They have tiny legs! Haven't you seen their tiny legs?!"

"Oh. Roger!"

Off they went, one giant turtle boy, four tiny alligator toddlers, and two normal human girls; to get their candy and participate in the holiday spirit.

None of the parents called them. Maybe they were terrified of throwing the kids off their game, or drawing any more attention to the spectacle than had already been drawn. At least Leonardo and Raphael were out on the rooftops and street corners somewhere, keeping an eye on them, so hopefully that would be enough.

Sandro had never previously felt so responsible in his life and, from the look of her, neither had Shadow.

* * *

Shadow _had_ told Sandro she'd been thinking of swooping by an extra house on the corner or two, the places which she remembered were a little wealthier and where the house owners tended to give out full-sized candy bars.

That idea was gone! Completely gone!

They completed their circular route of the neighborhood, dutifully hitting houses on either side of the street, and in one instance chasing after a toddler who became distracted by a Halloween decoration in the likeness of a giant dragon and who tried to wander off to go interact with it. Her sisters chastised her with tiny grunts and squeaks until Sandro managed to hush shhh shhh them back down into revered silence.

They reached one incredibly well-decorated house with tombstones bearing puns on them, and anamatronics everywhere. The girls became very concerned at a pair of pants and shoes sticking out from under the closed garage door, worried someone had been crushed. They tugged Sandro's pant leg and pointed. Sandro tried to explain it was all fake, like on a television, and couldn't hurt anybody. He saw one of their hoods—Rainbow Dash's—was drooping down, and he tugged it back up and adjusted her mask.

Shadow paused. "Uh, little kids sometimes go around this house," she said. "Cause they think it's scary."

Wildcard glanced over her shoulder and grinned charmingly. "Nah, I think they've got this one!" And so the little train of gator ducklings snaked through the prop and spider-web covered sidewalk up to the front door, probably feeling like they were on a real horror movie set (the world had to be so much bigger from down there at knee level...!) and possibly huddling closer to one another.

At the door, they were greeted by a fabulously dressed witch and a bowl of candy that tried to grab your hand with its own, severed, Frankenstein hand when you reached for candy. Wildcard didn't even jump. She took a whole Reese bar. The toddlers watched her and then one of them—Pinkie Pie—edged forward first. She absconded, unharmed, with an Almond Joy! The other three girls shared a look and then mobbed the candy bowl, pulling out a trophy a piece!

The neighbor lady cackled and told them they had the bravest little babies they'd ever met, and let them take a second piece.

The girls tottered back down the scary path after Wildcard seeming positively gleeful with their successful quest.

* * *

The three older children got so much into the 'groove' of babysitting their four little ones—catching the ones who tripped, re-tying shoelaces, pausing to stare at interesting costumes, admiring the scenery, and dodging other kids—that looking around and realizing they were on their last house almost _surprised_ them. But, indeed, when they peered one lawn over, they could see Mr. Jones' house was next, and Gorilla-Michelangelo was busy being King Kong on the doorstep and handing out candy to the children ahead of them.

Sandro had completely forgotten that he, himself, was undercover. He, well, he'd ended up feeling completely unremarkable next to the safety of the four babies, ha! Thinking back, he did remember seeing quite a hell of a lot of different houses. Their candy bags had gone from empty to bulging with chocolate booty, so much so that the toddlers' bags were dragging on the ground just a bit.

"Well this was a resounding success," Wildcard mentioned to him.

"Do _not_ count our eggs until we are all safely back inside that building," Sandro groaned. "You'll jinx us."

"Yeah," Shadow agreed.

"I don't believe in jinxes," Wild said, and Sandro resisted the urge to slap her upside the back of the head.

They said their 'trick or treat' and got their final candies, and then hurried up the sidewalk to their goal post. End zone! Touchdown! Biscuit in the basket! _Something!_

"Oh thank God," Michelangelo moaned, standing up and reaching out to them. "You guys are _back_. Everyone panicked. Are they all okay?"

"No sweat, Sunshine, it was easy!" Wildcard reported in, patting Mikey upon the arm. (Wildcard had at least three or four separate names for Mikey, and the nicknaming was mutual.) "They are tiny unicorn _angels_."

"They aarreeee," Mikey whimpered. "I don't even know how they know what trick-or-treating iiissss... Where did they get pilllowwcassess...?"

"They're _very_ observant," Sandro groaned, herding his ducklings up the staircase past Michelangelo and into the house. "They figured out _everything_."

Wildcard pushed open the screen door and led them inside. She and Sandro heard Donatello say something to the affect of, "Leath, it's okay, it's _okay_ , they're coming up the front porch right now and they're _back-"_ and then an alligator had taken the turn into the atrium so fast it would have given a comic book panel whiplash just to feature him in it. Wide-eyed and looking positively terrified (for something so enormous, so fearsome, so _toothy_ ), he bolted up before his girls, skid to his knees, and threw his arms around them.

"Aw," Wildcard peeped wondrously, trying to keep out of the way so as not to ruin the moment, which was probably a good idea because a very anxious Dad with sharp teeth had never met her before. In fact, if _Wildcard_ was being delicate about this, chances were she foresaw some kind of future in which Leatherhead did lash out at her.

"It's okay, sir," Sandro reached out as he entered second-to-last, placing his hands on the gator's shoulder. "They're _all_ okay, we watched them like _hawks,_ not one of them got so much as a scraped knee..."

Then Leatherhead hugged _him,_ too.


	3. Halloween - Part 3

Author's Note: The Turtles presently live under *Jersey City,* which sits right next to New York City and is very nearly the same city—separated only by a river and a set of bridges and tunnels.

* * *

The gator girls had made out like bandits, was the first thing Raphael saw as he slid aside the rear patio screen door and slipped inside. They were sitting in a ring on the floor, rifling excitedly through their bags of colorful shapes and smells, sniffing and sorting things into piles with squeaks and titters.

Raphael watched them trade Michelangelo a Reese cup for a park of Smarties, and he nearly smacked Mikey for giving babes what didn't know better shit trade ratios, when it suddenly dawned on him the kids couldn't have milk chocolate. Lactose intolerance. Huh. Well that was a shame. If he'd of known, he'd have ordered some dark chocolate stuff. Raph preferred his cocoa bitter, himself.

"Those kids are _effing smart,_ " ended up being the first thing he did say, as he rounded them and entered the kitchen, stripping off gloves and coat. "That there was a coordinated escape plan! One of em stood lookout at the gate, and another took a knee ta boost her sis up ta reach the lock, saw it myself!"

"Really?" Donatello asked, incredulous, because they were talking about kids fresh out of diapers who couldn't talk.

"Oh yeah!" Raphael emphasized, throwing down his gloves. The sight of Leatherhead gave him pause just there, cause the big guy looked more dangerously upset than Raph had seen him in at least a decade. Ape'd been playing down his reaction over the phone.

 _Course he's upset, dumbass,_ Raphael scolded himself. _These are his baby girls, his flesh and blood and his only damn family in da world. How would you feel? If ya had no brothers, no wife, and Sandro went missin? Kami only knows what he's been through already for em; wouldn't tell us shit at Northamptom._

"Well," Donatello cleared his throat as he pushed a tall thermos of something hot into Leatherhead's claws, and chafed reassuringly at a shoulder. "They have a very intelligent father."

Leatherhead huffed, almost despairingly, like he found that morbidly funny. Raphael shifted, uncomfortable, glad Donatello was on the case and wondering if Mikey shouldn't get over here. Orange might as well have had magic powers when it came to getting LH to chill. God knew Raphael and Leo'd never had any luck at it, and Donatello needed him to be at least mentally present enough to discuss science and shit. Raphael watched a bit longer. LH's gaze stayed fixed on the girls half a room away, watching them like they were the only thing in the whole damn world worth doing right by.

Kay, time to fire up the grill and have it hot and toasty by the time Casey got back to help him. Weren't nothing like beef to put a person in a better mood.

* * *

The Hamato family had very nearly forgotten inviting Leatherhead and his girls to winter with them in the Lair that year, but Leonardo recalled the invitation as he reentered the domicile through the upstairs window and made his way for the staircase down. There was little other explanation for why Leatherhead had come out to the party; he wanted to know if the invitation still stood. It did, but Leonardo would have to make the situation with their daily visitor clear to him, to ensure everyone was comfortable with it.

And speaking of 'daily visitors,' this one needed a stern talking-to.

"Where is _Kinpōgekun?"_ he asked the family as he alighted on ground floor. Hmm. A quick scan revealed neither teenager.

"Why does _everyone_ have a different name for the tiny chick?" Casey asked on his way towards the rear door. "How do any of you know who each other are talking about? The hell does 'Kinpōgekun' even mean?"

"My daughter is the Lass of Many Nicknames!" Michelangelo asserted. "It's just her shtick, yo!"

"She's not even your kid! No, no, that's not the strangest part," Casey pointed with a beer. "Why does she call you _Mom_!? Is there something no one's telling me!?"

"She's already got a dad!" Mikey protested. "It was the only open position! I was unqualified but hey you know what they say, you've gotta submit your resume anyway!"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

"Where is Sandro?" Leo supplemented his inquiry.

A hand popped feebly up from beyond the back of a couch, "Here uncle," an exhausted-sounding turtle nephew groaned. "Nap required. Half hour. Too much responsibility. Adrenaline crash."

"Oh my god," Shadow agreed, looking up from Michelangelo's side with a haunted expression that suggested she, too, might need to curl up on a comfy arm chair for fifteen minutes or so if she was to enjoy the actual party. "That was _so stressful._ I can't even keep a pet goldfish alive...!"

"Ooh," April popped up to comment. "Casey confessed something to Raphael about that goldfish."

"Did he _kill_ Popeye?" Shadow growled. "I knew it! I knew that tank was different!" She twisted around and shouted out the patio screen door. "Fuck you Daaadd! You're a murderer!"

"Ape!" Casey wailed. "Why!?"

"Language," Mikey said under the wide-eyed stares of several adults who couldn't believe Shadow had just cursed at her own father. "We can't teach the gator babies bad words."

"Oh! Uh. Yeah." Shadow blushed guiltily, even as they could hear Raphael roaring with laughter.

Hmph! Well. Leonard was somewhat mollified the children had understood the severity of the situation they'd been presented with, and hadn't acted out of some selfish or heedless impulse. And, indeed, the result had been that four extra children—children who rarely got to do anything 'normal'—had successfully been able to blend into the crowd and enjoy a holiday.

"Where is your 'sister,' Sandro?" Leo still prompted, because at least one teenager had been having far too much fun, and she, at least, required a proper chastisement.

"You mean Mini-Mikey?" Sandro's thin voice was already half unconscious. "Yeah, she's already out. I got 'er."

Leo paused, blinked, and then strode across the house and looked down over that couch to inspect matters. Both children were flopped into the left corner, half over the arm rest, half kicked up onto the middle cushion. Sandro was upright, and Kinpōge was sprawled half over his knees with an arm draped over her eyes, snoring. In a foam shell, still.

Well. Sigh. At least they'd managed not to accidentally end up looking like a couple this time around. Leo sighed, and patted Sandro's shoulder to let him know he could doze off. Perhaps it was better that no one got lectured while Leonardo was still angry, anyway.

Leo turned only to find April there at his elbow, coming up with a concerned expression to assess teenager configuration for herself. Her concern abated almost immediately, and she gave a little laugh.

"Are, um," she asked quietly, leaning near Leo so he could hear her without risking disturbing Sandro. "Are they _usually_ this cute?"

"Yes," Leo said instantly and without hesitation, because the children's mutually affectionate behavior had looked to be a topic both Donatello and Michelangelo had been nervously trying to raise with her without knowing where to begin, or how to make the conversation less peculiar. "The connotation of their familiarity might change in a year or two, but—for now—they are reminding us keenly of ourselves. Siblings."

"In retrospect, it makes perfect sense why he needed a friend so badly... why he needed one he'd picked instead of... one we had. He's just as isolated as the four of you ever were," April admitted, even as she smiled admiringly down at her son and that disguise that gave them all that rare peek at Sandro-as-human. "No matter how much we tried to give him more than we had."

Leo studied her and then lifted a hand and set it on her shoulder. "We did not turn out so terrible," he said.

April smiled up at him, and then slipped an arm around his shell and hugged into him. "That's true." She admired her sleeping boy and the rest of the family.

Hamato Leonardo tried to figure out how he was supposed to respond to being hugged by his sister-in-law who was, by now, truthfully as close to him as his own brothers. Objectively speaking, it did indeed seem _peculiar_ that the answer no longer came naturally to him. _Be happy,_ he suggested to himself. _Smile._ He let himself do so, and woodenly eased an arm around her. She laughed a little at him, but still hugged close and did not immediately leave.

Apparently he'd been at least partially forgiven for what he'd said to her about Sandro, during the drama earlier in the month.

 _They are coming home to stay in December. She and Raphael, both. They are coming home to stay. No more commute. No more living and working in New York on every day but weekends._

Leo relaxed a little more, settling down his guard to appreciate the interpersonal contact for a bit.

He had missed them.


	4. The Checkup

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* * *

"Wait," Wildcard had realized as she shimmied out of her foam shell. "The tiny alligators are going to be moving in with us!?"

"I regret to inform you that you and I don't live together," Sandro had to remind, hands in his pockets.

"Details, details!" she waved away, enthusiasm mounting. "This means we get to keep the tiny toothy rawrs!"

"Just for the winter," Sandro reminded more.

"That's like forever!" Wildcard squealed, only for dread to sink her countenance. "Oh _no_. What if I end up doing something they _copy_? I'm not ready for this level of commitment. Sandro! I can't be responsible all the time! I don't know _how!_ "

"Yup," Sandro agreed with small nods. "They'll be leaping off of tall buildings and planning bank heists by the end of the week. We're doomed."

"This isn't right! Salazzle doesn't have Prankster! That defies its entire idiom as a sweeper!"

"I have _no idea_ what you just said."

She plopped her hands on her hips and squinted at him. "How is it possible that half your uncles play Pokemon and you've barely even _heard_ of it?"

The Lair's smallest turtle gave a big shrug. "They can all apparently _beat box,_ and I can't do that either. Isn't that the bigger crime?"

"Oh yeah. Man, talk about let downs when it comes to passing on wisdom to future generations."

"Ayup. Wait a minute. Do you even _own_ a Nintendo system? Isn't that what Pokemon is? Nintendo? Handhelds?"

"Gonna tell it to you straight, San, I totally played it on phone emulators under my desk during school when I was supposed to be listening to the teacher."

"Oh. Well. _That_ makes more sense."

* * *

Despite the Trick Or Treat Incident, the repeated Pokemon references, and the small maniac coming in to and out of the Lair everyday, Leatherhead had shown zero hesitation in asking whether Leonardo and Donatello's offer to winter with the turtles still stood.

Turtles very nearly climbed of one another to answer him first. Leonardo confirmed, in no uncertain terms, that Leatherhead and the children were welcome. "I assure you Donatello could use the intellectual stimulation of good conversation. And Michelangelo... well, Michelangelo remains Michelangelo. But I must warn that my apprentice is still very new to our circle," Leo'd intoned, all formal and stiff like Leo usually was, "and that her father has no preexisting connection to us."

"Your nephew trusts her. You trust her. I trust your judgement."

Michelangelo fist-pumped behind Donnie, who let out a silent breath in relief.

* * *

Back at the Lair Michelangelo had all of Wildcard's enthusiasm, and zero of her trepidation. He showed the children every room of the Lair and then ended up playing tag with them. Furniture was disturbed in great quantities, albeit mostly by Michelangelo himself. The children, as it turned out, were as polite about leaving objects undamaged as four-year-olds could possibly be. In fact, the girls had been in the house no longer than a single meal before it became clear they had impeccable manners.

And from that, Donatello got more than just intellectual stimulation. He got _peace of mind._

The girls stayed in their seats. They squeaked at appropriate points for 'thank you' and 'please' while being served. They put their napkins in their laps, and ate with their silverware. When one of them got mashed potatoes on her nose, the other helped wipe it off. As far as toddlers went, they were almost frighteningly low-maintenance, and Donatello couldn't decide if this was an aspect of their upbringing (Leatherhead was very polite), related to their animal genes (alligators were born more immediately capable of complex physical activities than humans), related to mutagen (which enhanced learning), or simply a lucky roll of the dice. No other four year old with whom Donatello was familiar (his sample size was admittedly small) was anywhere near as independent (or interdependent) as these angels were.

Or maybe Donatello and his brothers had been similar, owed to having three of one-another and only one caregiver? Splinter wasn't around to tell them one way or another. Raphael had definitely been moody at an early age, and Michelangelo had been a magpie and prone to breaking things, but Donatello's oldest memories suggested they'd all been able to groom themselves and look after one another. His earliest memories were probably of Baby-Leo lecturing the rest of them to wash their hands before Splinter got home with food. Back when their voices had all been high-pitched. Heh.

Donatello watched from his seat and took a long slow breath through his nose. _This is good,_ he mentally calculated. _All of my long-term observations have been good. They were able to recognize names and characters from fictional media, to identify with colors and personality types, to observe and mimic behavioral patterns, to devise goals and plans for reaching those goals, and then carry those plans out, to recognize themselves in mirrors, and to understand concepts such as dirty, clean, theirs, not theirs, fictional, and real._

And now he had them all in one place, safe, in the Lair, where he could continue to make observations, take notes, run simulations, and—hopefully—advise their father. Donatello knew Leatherhead would be fiercely protective of the girls, but if he was reading between the lines properly, their conception had been something of an accident. That said, it was a little too early and impersonal for Dontello to be recommending tubal ligation procedures, regardless of whether they'd be reversible.

Still, humming anxiously in the back of Donatello's mind was the warning: They had four children, none of whom could speak English, all at risk of going native in the Florida Everglades ten years from now and spreading super-intelligent alligator genes throughout the wild population. The ecological—not to mention personal or _political_ —ramifications could be dire. Donnie could imagine gators swarming the USA, uneducated, under-nurtured, wild children in animal bodies, cunningly hunting down everything from bears to children to police officers. Donatello could imagine swat teams, or mafia goons, or _who even knew what else,_ combing through the country on mutant-hunting sprees, whether to eradicate them or to harvest their DNA or mutagen.

The difference between Sandro and the girls' was this: Sandro was _more human_ than Raphael. By contrast, the girls' mother had clearly been a wild gator. Sandro had picked up on it. Donatello had picked up on it. And then Leatherhead had essentially confirmed it by explaining the girls' had been part of a larger clutch, all of whom had been cannibalized while their mother had carried them to safety. Donatello had then been able to tick off the warning signs left and right: The girls could not speak; They had no lips; It was unclear how well they understood spoken language; They often moved around on all fours at a 'skitter' instead of a 'crawl,' suggesting they found a quadrupedal gait more natural than an upright totter; They could swim like they'd been born in the water; Etc. etc. etc.

He'd been gravely concerned about their intelligence. Their mutagen. Their futures. He'd been gravely concerned about their ability to procreate, and exactly how early in life they'd become sexually mature, and whether they'd _understand_ modesty, temperance, or their responsibility not to leave vulnerable super-mutant gator eggs all over the southeastern United States.

But now, watching them play and interact with startling cleverness, Donatello felt more at ease. This felt like a problem he had control over. The prognosis was steadily proving less severe than he'd initially feared. He'd be able to help and protect these children, this way. He'd be able to contribute to their growth.

Leatherhead's sexual preferences weren't Donatello's business, and neither was any philosophical or ethical dilemmas which resulted from what couldn't actually even be called zoophilia. Leatherhead had been mutated as a sub-adult, and it made perfect sense that he found alligators attractive. Leatherhead struggled to identify with humans or with his own humanity, regardless of how intelligent he was. They looked alien to him. Furthermore, even Donatello would have supposed that if mutant + human offspring were viable, mutant + animal offspring would not be.

Apparently mutagen would roll up its sleeves regardless of what sperm hit what egg.

...Dear God in Heaven and By All the Protector Kami, do not phrase it like that! Donnie, you'll give yourself nightmares! That's not how it works! Otherwise, there would be ecological risks associated with masturbating in the shower! What if mutant sperm met up with fish or amphibian egg and- Stop thinking about it! First of all, human DNA from April matched up with some human DNA in Raphael. There was a point of commonality for mutagen to latch on to, and it had to take in a second sperm to complete the couplet on some of Raphael's genes, and the duplicate some of April's genes, just to make full working sets of both types of chromosomes.

Likewise, alligator DNA from the girls' mother fitted with Leatherhead's original DNA. The small traces of latent mutgen in our bodily fluids activated to repair the ovum's partial genome match. It is therefore likely that _mutant turtles_ can breed with natural turtles, and _mutant alligators_ can breed with humans, but mutant turtles can not breed with natural alligators and vise versa. Too little mutagen, and no point to start the work from.

Furthermore, sperm cells are extremely short-lived and fragile and will be destroyed and eaten by most cells of other organisms. If fertilization just worked with literally anything, you'd be accidentally reproducing with _flu viruses_ and the fungal rot going on Raphael's shell and random gut bacteria, which hasn't happened (though maybe take cultivars to reassure yourself), because even though mutagen seems like _magic_ sometimes, even magic has rules—they're just harder to study in a scientific context.

Well.

Yeah.

That is all very true.

But maybe just be neurotic about the whole thing for your own personal comfort, and check how much chlorine you're presently mixing with our sewage. And then go play video games with Michelangelo all evening to level your brain out again so you don't go to bed in an anxious fit.

* * *

It was time for the baby gators' first pediatric exam.

Michelangelo entertained three sisters, while Leatherhead scooped up the fourth and settled down on the cot in the family clinic with her seated upon his knee. By the pastel color of her scarf, Donatello recalled this one had been dubbed 'Rainbow Dash' (or 'Blue' if one was trying to save on Raphael's sanity).

"Is she shy at all about interpersonal attention?" Donatello asked, selecting an otoscope and a tongue depressor.

"No," Leatherhead answered. "They were skittish in infancy, so I groomed them daily to encourage social behavior. By all measures, it has worked."

"It's definitely worked. They're adorable together," Donnie agreed, coming over to present 'Blue' with a plush chameleon, so she'd forgive him for shining bright lights in her eyes. "It's a pity they don't have hair to style or something like that."

Leatherhead chuckled.

Eyes, nose, mouth, ear membranes; Donatello had a good look at her five senses with an otoscope while her father reassured her and distracted her with books, dolls, and tickles. Donnie had the sense that Leatherhead might have been on the move most of the girls' life. Despite lacking proper equipment out there in the world, he did have an extensive background in mutant biology, and all four children were clean, plump, and clearly well provided for. If there had been any serious problems with any of them, Leatherhead would have known.

"Their tongues are inflexible and do not rest against the roof of the mouth," Leatherhead explained to Donatello, and took the tongue depressor gently from his hand to demonstrate. "Unable to touch it to the roofs of their mouths to change air flow, they cannot make consonants."

"Mn," Donatello leaned over to peer between those triangular little teeth and see how much of the tongue was rooted to the jaw floor. "The problem with plosives was obvious: No lips, and not even any hard covering like beaks..."

"But this compounds it," Leatherhead agreed as his daughter touched her own tongue in bewilderment and then went back to playing with a stuffed bear in his lap. "I have heard only the simplest of affricatives. No dentals. No aveolars. They have the 'N,' 'S,' 'H,' and some near relatives, few of which will help them with English. I do not believe they will learn to speak."

Donatello was already thinking about solutions, rubbing his palm across his beak and jaw as he. The children were beautiful, and not just _aesthetically speaking,_ the way some of Sandro's python morphs were beautiful. Rainbow Dash was beautiful in the way children were—all children—with cherubic faces, big eyes, and heads full of colors and questions. She might have been facing a future that tried to label her as government property or some kind of animal. Speech—the spoken word—was still the metric by which many humans seemed to evaluate intelligence. That the girls couldn't speak to defend their sentience felt ominous, like a tragedy waiting to happen.

"I'll look into it," Donatello said, trading an otoscope for a stethoscope. "I was originally going to ask you if I could take some blood samples, but instead I think I want to vaccinate them. The last thing anyone here needs is to accidentally become Patient Zero for mutant chickenpox..."

"Here here."

He took notes on breath sounds, baseline temperature, heart rate and blood pressure (he did indeed have a child-sized blood pressure cuff, from when Sandro had been this tiny), capillary refill, and skin texture, and then he examined their hands and feet. He was looking for the similarities and differences with regards to human biology; in general, human biology was what most medical science research papers were published on, and anything that differed from human norm would be something of an enigma.

The fingers were grubbier and felt more suited for traversing muddy riverbanks than fine manipulation, but he tested the grip strength and the range of motion of the thumb and found them very satisfactory.

The examination of each child went rather the same, and, so close to them, Donatello could make out subtle differences in their features, stature, and personality. Blue was taller, assertive and focused; Pink was rounder, scatter-brained and affectionate; Yellow was mellow and patient; and Purple-

"Oh!" Donatello chuckled in surprise as his otoscope was grabbed by a tiny five-fingered hand. He looked down to see her bright stare fixed on the otoscope; the stuffed animal sat discarded to the side. "Oh you're curious about my doctor's things, are you?"

She squeaked, lifting both hands eagerly up.

Donatello leaned close and raised a hand to shine the light upon his palm, showing her how the otoscope worked. Naturally _she_ then wanted to operate it, but a light jostle from her father put her back in an obedient mood, and she held very still as Donatello peeked in her ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. Then she waited eagerly to see what he'd do next, so, naturally, he showed her the stethoscope and let her use it to feel the heart of everyone in the room. The look on her face as she realized what she could hear was priceless. Four-year-old glee was one of the purest forms of enthusiasm in the world.

By the time Donatello was jotting down his notes and his patient was trying to steal his notes to look at them, an impression had been made. Trying to keep her from mimicking her doctor and scribbling nonsense into every white line available, Leatherhead tried to distract her with toys and stickers. When that did not work, Donatello hesitantly reached out with both hands, and Leatherhead transfered the child to him, and Donatello sat her sidesaddle upon his hip (there was no other way to fit a child there owed to the shell) and gave her a spare pair of spectacles to play with.

"Is she always like this?" Donatello asked.

"Mn. She has correctly selected her color," Leatherhead agreed with a sigh, which was his first recorded acknowledgement that any of his children had received names and/or color affiliations.

The little girl peeked up at Donatello from behind the glasses, her eyes comically magnified, and she blinked rapidly and went cross-eyed.

Dontatello checked her knee, ankle, and elbow reflexes while she was distracted. Then he had to hand over the reflex hammer for her inspection. He checked her feet and cappilary refill and hands. So she started examining _his_ hands. "I think I might accidentally fall in love," he admitted as a tiny alligator child read his palm.

Leatherhead started laughing.

* * *

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	5. The Zoo - Part 1

Trips - The Zoo

* * *

The silver rental sedan crept up to first place in the left-hand turning lane at eight-thirty in the morning, waiting for the light to change.

Tapping her hands nervously on the steering wheel, April O'Neil flipped down her sun visor to take another look at her hair in the vanity mirror. She mussed through the black curls and turned her head from side to side, and sucked in a deep breath. Okay. She'd done this before. Between the wig, colored contacts, and casual clothing, she was invisible.

"I barely recognize you, mom," reassured her son from the passenger seat, where he was trying and failing not to show off how giddy he was to even be in the passenger seat. "Do new cars always smell like this?"

April laughed. "I've actually had very few 'new cars.' You should have seen the old jalopy I drove to get to and from college. That thing ran exclusively on prayers and your father's ability to perform a rapid oil change."

"Really?" Sandro blinked over at her, the cream of his makeup application barely visible through his hood in this lighting. "Donnie couldn't build anything better?"

"I started college the spring after you were born," April explained, closing the vanity mirror as the light turned green. "I was lucky they let me defer my scholarships. We'd just gotten back into the Lair, which had been trashed when the Foot drove us out of the city. Donnie was trying to salvage what little remained of his lab, and the Shellraiser was too valuable to risk on an open parking lot. Leo saved my break lines from being cut twice, and the Foot very nearly got away with tying explosives to the ignition. I stuck to night classes and kept a tanto up my sleeve at all times; you can imagine why."

"Holy chalupa," Sandro assessed. "And you were... eighteen? And had a baby."

"A very fussy baby, too," April agreed with a laugh. "But I wouldn't have changed how it all turned out for anything. We made it by sticking together, playing off each other." She gave him an apologetic smile. "I think you're right, you know. I should have come home earlier."

"It's..." Sandro shrugged gently and smiled. "You're here now." Then he blinked and became distracted peering at storefronts through the window. "Are we—are we driving through some kind of Little Italy?"

"Mn-hmm! And your father is _adamant_ we pick up fine Italian sausage on our way home, or he will be very, very, very cross with us. Which may or may not be his way with dealing with the stress of letting us out on our own." She winked. "Are you nervous?"

"Yes I'm nervous, how could you not warn me we're going on a shopping trip through Little Italy after our trip to the zoo!? Wild's going to _combust from joy_ at the sheer quantity of butter, cheese, and noodles contained within a five meter spread around her. It could be dangerous. I'm under prepared!"

* * *

"Well this is a cute neighborhood," Wildcard remarked of the adorable plazas, attractive brick roads, and glassy buildings around them. "I would not mind being a pedestrian shopper here. Where are all the drive by shootings and drug deals?"

"The child has gone skipping through Gotham's Narrows in the twilight hours, and here is teasing the Bronx," her father, 'Mr. Hamilton,' drawled as he slurped on his McDonald's coffee. "Like she hasn't lived in inner city ghettos all her life."

"Hey, Greenville is _very nice_ compared to everywhere else I've ever lived. You're _spoiling me_."

He laughed.

Wildcard perked up at the sight of trees, mantled in the red, brown, and yellow of late fall. 'Fordham University' said a placard around a beautiful black-gated campus and old stone buildings. She peered curiously at them, and wondered about that trip Sandro would be taking in the spring, that trip to see Jean Grey's school. Would it look like this? She wished she could go, but one place Wild could definitely _not_ go was within a hundred meters of a telepath...

"Ooh!" she pointed and hopped in her seat and pointed to the great bronze letters proclaiming BRONX ZOO on the left, and the beautiful ornate turquoise (aged copper?) gates framing the quaint parkway they'd turned onto. "Ooh, we're there! We're almost there!"

* * *

"Say," said one driver across the roof a bright orange Hyundai hatchback as he squinted mischievously. "You look _familiar,_ stranger."

The other driver twisted about in surprise, laughed and waved as she shouldered her purse. Wildcard hurried past to find out where her brother was.

Sandro and Donatello had planned the stuffing out of this trip, for the optimal excursion experience. They'd purchased their tickets ahead of time for about ten dollars more a piece than general admission. A premium fee of 23$ per vehicle had them parking directly around Rockefeller Fountain in a quaint little circle at the heart of the zoo, at the oldest and best manicured entrance, to ensure they'd been able to enter right as the door were opening.

They'd joked that if Casey Jones was late, Sandro might break rank and storm the gates with his mother digging her heels in and helplessly trying to stop him.

"There you are!" Wildcard threw open the passenger door to the sight of Sandro storming nothing and rocking himself through a panic attack. "Come here!" she demanded, opening her arms to receive him.

Sandro fumbled out of the car like he had no idea how legs worked, but then stooped to squeeze her off her feet. "I'm scared," he breathed where his mom couldn't hear him.

Of _course_ he was scared. His last major trip outside had been for a single hour, with uncles and parents deployed on every side like a paramilitary special ops contingent. This was different, this was almost like _before,_ back when they'd been sneaking out during the day as a last ditch effort to hide from discovery.

"Pssh!" she redirected him, "That's just cause I haven't checked your uncles' handiwork yet!"

Sandro set her down and hunkered over down and let her do just that. Mikey and Donnie had been responsible for today's makeup and prosthetic job, and the darlings had been practicing all week. Donnie's approach was to note Wild's procedure step by step down to a granular level of detail. Mikey's approach was to wing it and forget half of everything. With their powers combined, they'd managed to reproduce the full masterpeice.

Well, not 'full.'

The 'full' beak-occluding prosthetic they'd used for Halloween wouldn't cut it for today; Sandro was going to need to eat before this trip was over. Instead, Wildcard had cast a copy of the prosthetic and edited it to only cover the nose and upper beak ridge. With a high collar and hood on, in chilly November weather, he was completely indistinguishable from a human.

And that was important, because Sandro had to be able to lift his head to look around if he was going to enjoy a _zoo_ in any meaningful capacity.

"It's good," she confirmed, and he closed his eyes and nodded through some deep breaths. "San," she murmured, leaning forward and touching her forehead to his. San you've _got me_. You stick to me like glue, kay? Like before, except that you look _perfect,_ and you can hold your head high. Okay? _Okay?_ "

His fingers tightened on her arms. She lifted her chin and stood on her toes and smooched his forehead.

"Hold my hand till you calm down," she said.

The silly adults wouldn't even notice; they were too busy basking in how bizarre it felt to meet during the day time in a public place like they were all normal.

* * *

"I found them!" said Shadow, who could recognize the teenagers if not the adults, and she bolted ahead of her father to give Sandro an arm punch of greeting. "Hey! You sent me a _billion_ texts. Control-freak much?"

"It's my _one day out a month_ ," Sandro sassed back with a jab of his finger. "But, uh, thanks for sending me your ETA. Appreciated that."

"Case!" April waved him over, excitedly, and both fathers—Jones and 'Hamilton'—got their first looks at one another.

They were not of entirely dissimilar builds or heights, though Mr. Jones was about a size larger. When they shook hands, it was with a visibly firm grasp, and callouses were something they had in common. Whatever Raphael had liked about Andrew Hamilton at first glance, Casey must have been on the same wavelength, because there wasn't any of his usual wariness about strangers when he kicked things off with the charmingly impolite:

"So _you're_ the crazy girl's dad, huh?"

"I am," Andrew Hamilton agreed, full stop, and Casey reacted with a laugh.

"Well! At least ya know. I've got this little fighter, here. Shadow!"

"Hi," Shadow waved distractedly, completely disinterested in the new adult, and much more interested in the older kids.

"Yo, get over here, kiddo!"

April cleared her throat, "She has her father's manners," she confided to Mr. Hamilton with a wink.

"Naw, my mamma always told me to be nice ta her guests, and ta say my pleases and thank-yous and my 'it's very nice to meet yous,' so I must be teachin' something wrong," Casey admitted, as he leaned over to ruffle his daughter's hair.

"Hey Dad!" Wildcard had to break the tranquility by preying on Shadow's unsuspecting father. "Mr. Jones is also a single father! You should ask him o-"

"I've got her, Mr. Hamilton, Sir," Sandro had performed a headlock maneuver, indifferent to the fact that Wildcard had probably been trying to get Jones back for Shadow's comments about Mikey, or maybe for Donatello. This was his day out as a 'family' and dammit everyone was going to get along! "Your dignity is safe for the next two to three minutes."

"Oh, well, that's plenty of time to distract her." Mr. Hamilton looked to Mrs. O'Neil with a long-suffering expression to explain: "My lack of romantic inclinations has clearly bene a lifelong puzzle to this child; there is no other explanation for why she's been joking about setting me up with people from the time she's been old enough to speak. Male, female, she's indifferent. It's part of her idiom; just ignore."

"She's definitely an idiot," Shadow agreed, albeit fondly, and with the wrong ending consonant.

"C'mon, let's go already!" Wildcard took issue with their priorities as she managed to get her brother's hand away from her mouth. "Places to go! Animals to see! Sandros to tease!"

Whereupon the children led the way like they knew what they were doing, and the adults followed at a parental stroll, like _they_ knew what _they_ were doing—as if leisurely visits to the zoo with their children and parent circle weren't completely new to all of them—and they struck up a conversation about how nice the autumn foliage still was this November.


	6. The Zoo - Part 2

April was wearing a hidden camera that allowed some anxious family members to keep tabs on her from a city away.

"How's the signal holdin'?" Raphael called across the house, trying not to take too much interest in the setup because it was just going to make him twitchy. If something happened, Donatello would obviously let him know.

"Splendidly," Don reported. "Told you it would."

"Audio quality's awwessommmee," Mikey praised. "Totally awesome improvement, bro!"

And in fact, even from about five yards, away, the camera picked up Sandro's nearly theatrical-grade pronouncement: _"These - are - sealions."_

 _"Duh, it says that right in front of you!"_ Shadow complained. _"I thought you were supposed to be smart."_

Sandro twisted to look at Wildcard and ignored the insult. _"Sealions,"_ he repeated. _"Do you understand what this means?"_ He grabbed hold of Wildcard. _"Sealions are real."_ He began to shake her. _"T_ _hey don't just exist inside the television!"_

Donatello and Michelangelo both looked at one another. Then they fell into one another and busted out laughing. Someone was throwing the seals their breakfast for the day and Sandro went almost berserk babbling about the adorable sea lions catching thrown fish, up until he realized other animals were getting breakfast too.

 _"Oh my god it's penguins!"_ they heard their nephew squealing. _"There are penguins! Look! Penguins! Wild! Wild they are birds that swim! In Antarctica! They can't fly! It's also real! That means Antarctica is a place!"_

No word on what Wildcard thought of this yet, even though she was getting dragged around by the arm from exhibit to exhibit to have extremely obvious things pointed out to her by someone who was acting at a level of enthusiasm better befitting a five-year-old.

 _"Uh, is he okay?"_ Casey asked.

 _"Hush now. That boy is the most pure and innocent thing to be brought into existence by a human being since the invention of the Welsh Corgi,"_ Mr. Hamilton said. April looked his way. Mr. Hamilton slurped his McDonald's coffee, clearly rethinking that statement. _"Don't tell Sunshine,"_ he finally added.

Donatello and Michelangelo were sobbing into one another they were laughing so hard.

Raphael came up and looked between the two of them. "What the hell?" he demanded, because unabashed hysterics was not what he'd been expecting from a trip to the zoo.

Then the camera swiveled back to capture the family's incognito young turtle, who had finally found his komodo dragons. He leaned over the habitat wall, fixated on gigantic lizards who were easily six feet from nose to rump. After a long, silent appraisal, he looked back to his mother with this enormous, laughing smile. He looked _so happy._ Unexpectedly, when he looked down at Wildcard, his giggles twisted into visible tears.

Both his uncles quieted down to peek, and Raphael's grumpiness crumpled. April took a step forward in alarm, but Wildcard was already on hand and reached Sandro's and took his face in both hands and held onto him for a brief moment until he could breathe. Then he pounced on her, and hugged her to his side, and looked back to his dragons with her arm around the back of his shell and his resting on her shoulders.

"Awww," Mikey warbled. "He's _so overwhelmed..._!"

"This is a good experience for him," Donatello murmured. "He's got some of the same issues we had, different parts of him growing up at different rates... He should be able to calm down from here."

The kids backtracked past the parents to get to the next exhibit, and Wildcard somehow managed to get detached from Sandro for a moment. It sounded like Shadow and Sandro were talking off camera. Wild looked up at the parents with a valiantly straight expression and they got insight into her opinion of the whole situation when she said:

 _"Nobody stop him, or I'll pee in their afternoon lemonade."_

Casey started laughing.

 _"I'_ _m trying not to hover,"_ April explained, _"but I'm worried he's not thinking about his safety right now."_

 _"Oh he's not,_ " Wild agreed. _"I've grabbed his arm to keep him from bowling someone over mid-exhibit twice already. This is clearly going to take another ten to fifteen minutes before it filters out of his system."_

 _"Do I need to stick closer to him?"_ April asked, half of the girl and half of the other adults with her; it was understandable she was disoriented, as her preexisting assumptions about her parenting skills had recently been blown up in her face.

Wildcard only saluted. _"Naw, don't worry Sandro's Mama, he's got me! There exist no penguins of sufficient cuteness to distract me from the mission, I will defend your hysterical offspring with my life."_ Then she got grabbed from off-camera by the boy in question, who dragged her off because:

 _"Rhinos, there are rhinos!"_

And Donatello cracked up laughing again, because this was exactly how he and Mikey would have reacted to a zoo at Sandro's age.

"Uh-oh," Michelangelo was twisted around in his seat. "Donnnnieee? We may have attracted audience members in addition to Raphael."

Four tiny white alligators popped up all around him. The one in front reached out for the keyboard with both open hands, and Donatello yelped and had to grab her before she accidentally somehow caused the apocalypse with nothing more than space bars and the tab key. Heavens knew how it might happen, but he'd watched enough cartoons as a child to be sure it was possible.

"Hey LH!" Mikey cooed as the front door opened and two members of the household returned from their surveillance of friendly territory. "Hey Leo!"

"How goes the zoo trip?" Leatherhead inquired as he politely changed his shoes at the door, respecting their culture as their guest.

"Help we're having a mutiny at the control panel!" Donatello wailed, holding one gator by the scruff as another escaped Raphael's hands like a bar of soap.

* * *

Wildcard watched the crowd like a hawk. She had no intention of slapping Sandro out of his intense happysplosion. That made it her responsibility to protect him from crashing into wheelchairs, tripping over strollers, knocking down toddlers, and/or charging headlong through other people's family photographs.

She kept an arm firmly on his elbow to steer with, dug her heels in for a second to slow him down, and bumped into his hip to redirect him. When he turned to her to gush about penguines, she smiled and bobbed her head because she was too busy watching kaleidoscopic information about the future to hold a decent conversation.

Thank goodness for Shadow. Shadow was only eight, so animals were still awesome. She'd given up trying to tell Sandro how retarded he sounded (you take that back, Shadow, he's _adorablez),_ and now they were now reading the animal bios together. The komodo dragons were the turning point at which Sandro peaked, cracked, oscillated accidentally all the way to 'sad,' needed a brief face-cupping to recuperate, and then flew back up to 'excited' again.

By the Rhinos, Sandro was slowly leveling out. Keyed to his tone of voice, if not his words, Wildcard felt confident he'd soon be able to enjoy the zoo at a more leisurely and intellectual pace. They set off for the next exhibit only for Sandro to halt mid-pathway with a puzzled turn of his head to the space behind him. Wildcard was already looking over to see what was going to catch his attention.

Sandro had just realized there was children's petting zoo over there, nestled _beside_ but not quite in view of those spectacular komodo dragons. He looked thrown for a loop. Wildcard speculated it had to do with how un-exotic everything was Sheep, lama, chickens, cows, horses; these were things you'd find in a barn, and not so much on the African Savannah.

"Huh," he said.

Wildcard glanced behind her at the komodo dragons, reflected on how little time Sandro had actually spent looking at them, and decided they ought to stall for time because he'd regret leaving with only fifteen seconds given to his favorite animal, and no selfies taken in front of them.

"You want to go in?" Wildcard asked him of the petting zoo.

He blinked rapidly at the entire elementary school class presently exiting, and seemed to notice the little gate leading inward, flanked on either side by dispensers of hand sanitizer. "Can... can we do that? Are we too old?" he asked.

"What are they going to do, ticket us?" Shadow asked, always so bad-boy for someone so cute.

Sandro let them drag him along with a certain amount of trepidation on his face.

* * *

"What exactly is going on here?" Mr. Hamilton demanded not five minutes later.

"I'm feeding lettuce to a sheep," Sandro reported with the same reverence one would give a church. "I didn't have the foggiest conception what wool felt like until this moment."

"I'm taking video," April reported.

"I'm suckering my dad out of cash so I can ride on the pony," Shadow testified. "Yeeehaw!"

"I'm getting suckered out cash," Casey agreed.

"This miniature tortoise is staring at Sandro," Wild assessed of an exhibit at hip level.

Sandro blinked and turned around. A tiny tortoise only four inches long was pointed his way.

"Ten bucks says she's thinking 'dat ass,'" Wild decided.

Sandro shrugged. " _She_ hasn't seen my father."

Wildcard cracked up laughing and slapping her leg at that running gag, falling to the ground behind Sandro's heels. She was summarily dived by six chickens, all of whom wanted her to feed them.

"Ya need any help down there, let me know, Loudmouth," Sandro drawled charmingly as he went back to petting anything that would get close enough to take his lettuce, which was everything.

Wildcard clawed her way back up to the tortoise, sloughing chickens. "Oh hi, handsome! Never mind, it's a boy tortoise! See? We're french kissing."

Sandro stiffened incredulously and whipped around to glare at where Wildcard had touched her nose to a tortoises's nose.

"Eskimo kissing!" Sandro roared at her, throwing his hands up. "Not French. Eskimo!"

"Sshh, I'm working here!" she chastised with an evil wink, still mutually nose-booping her new romantic liason. "The lack of lips makes him very insecure, I gotta get it right the first time!"

Sandro glared indignantly, and then he picked up a rooster and plopped it on her head and she squealed and fell over again.

"Aaah! Dear Alfred Hitchcock, why!?" Wild wailed, choking on shrieks and laughs under a barrage of wings.

"Try not to get _cloacally_ kissed!" An angry turtle boy thundered over her.

That was about the point they got kicked out of the petting zoo. Well, all of them but Shadow, anyway.

* * *

Michelangelo was laughing into his hands so hard he was almost crying. Most of the gator girls were on top of him and clapping excitedly at all the commotion on screen.

Raphael was wincing with little 'ooh's at each thing that went wrong, because some of these things were definitely things you didn't say in earshot of parents, and there was also a rooster 'attacking' a person and some highly offended zoo keepers.

Donatello had given up and was lost in a face-palm, slowly shaking his head back and forward.

Mr. Hamilton, Casey, and April were all talking to each other and trying not to laugh, because it was scarcely thirty minutes after the park had opened and already there had been AN INCIDENT. An incident which was presently getting compared to literally everything the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had ever done.

After a moment the Leatherhead slowly turned and look at Leonardo, whose eyes were close to slits and who was watching the screen with a thin-lipped expression.

"This girl child is your apprentice?" Leatherhead required confirmation.

"I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving," Leo said tightly, in a way that suggested he was requesting someone to please knock him into a coma until sometime mid January.


	7. The Zoo - Part 3

Lunch was approaching, and the queues stretching out from the food kiosks clustered around the Dancing Crane Plaza which served as one of the big zoo nexuses. Naturally, as adults, the adults volunteered to both save a table and stand in these lines on their children's behalf, so long as the children remained some place easy to find.

Casey picked table duty and then asked if the kids wanted to ride on the Bug Carousel, but Shadow took one look at that oddly themed merry-go-round, and then gave her father a disgusted expression. "Dad, that's, like, for five-year-olds."

Sandro and Wildcard weren't entirely sure they felt the way Shadow did, seeing as it was likely the only time in their life they'd get to jump on big plastic insects and ride them around in a circle. Nevertheless, the line for it was also insanely long, and they figured either the parents would get their food before they got on it or, worse, there'd be no one to take pictures of Wildcard ignoring all safety precautions and belt buckles and doing a hand-stand on top of the rhinoceros beetle's head. That would be a tragic waste.

"What about the reptile house?" Mr. Hamilton suggested as he peered over at April O'Neil's map of the zoo.

Sandro and Wildcard jumped to attention. "Where do I sign up for that plan?" asked the boy who owned at least thirty snakes.

"The 'World of Reptiles' is down that way, but it's out of sight behind some trees," April gestured, before giving a stern eye to all there children. "Will you three behave yourselves? There's to be _absolutely_ no splitting up. You go right there, and then you meet us right back here at this table."

Sandro saluted his mother with a crisp nod.

"Sure whatever!" Shadow was already abandoning ship. "Come on slowpokes!"

"Wow. With her around, who needs me?" Wildcard wondered. "It's like I'm Sensei today or something, but I don't have half the brooding aura. I should work on that."

"That's a _smoldering_ aura," her father admonished with a glance over the map. "Try again."

"Curses. See, this is why I need practice. Oh!" Sandro had grabbed her hand and was dragging her along. "If we're late, it's cause Sandro's ogling the poison dart frogs for unreasonably long durations of time!"

"Not reptiles!" her father jumped in horror.

"No, but same building, I checked!" hollered his child back reassuringly.

"Oh." Mr. Hamilton looked to his companions and sighed in relief. "Thank goodness. Do we all actually know what our children _eat_ at McDonalds? Or... what else is here?"

"Duh," Casey replied with a raised brow, because he and Mr. Hamilton were on the same basic economic playing field as one another. "Boy's Happy Meal with chicken nuggets and barbecue sauce, and Orange Crush."

"Usually I get the Happy Meal for myself, give her the toy, and get her Two Cheeseburgers, pickles included, and a strawberry milkshake."

"That's all you can eat?" Casey was surprised.

"I'm nearly _fifty_ ," Mr. Hamilton muttered dryly.

"Oh, uh... 'scuse me."

"Don't worry, you'll get here, too. All in due time."

April, who had been silent for the last minute and a half rapidly scrambled for her phone, hoping to get hold of Sandro before he made it to the first exhibit.

* * *

Sandro was finally calm enough to actually _enjoy_ his trip to the zoo, which meant it was probably good the World of Reptiles had been placed so far from the zoo entrance. As two teens caught up to Shadow, it was to stare at a collection of absolutely gigantic American Alligators, who, despite the nippy time of year, were already out enjoying their outdoor exhibit.

The kids all paused, struck by both a fascination with the animals themselves, and by the eerie similarities and differences to LeatherHead. Like: LH himself had very simple, scaled lips, and normal reptiles just _didn't_. He and his daughter had domed foreheads to house intelligent brains, and unlike him, the girls had thinner, less muscular, almost birdlike necks which curled down from the backs of their heads to meet humanoid torsos, and this area gave their heads a rounded, cuter and more cherubic appearance than any normal croc or gator.

"You know," Shadow said wondrously, "everything else is extinct. This is what we've got. This is the only scaled animal left that's as _big_ as a person—"

"This is _much_ bigger than a person," Sandro murmured breathlessly with a glance at the information card. "About twice as big."

"—twice as big as _you._ It's LH's size, its you guys's adult size!"

"Shhh," Sandro hushed her with a glance behind him. Wildcard was already standing lookout for trouble, and no one was nearby."Shadow, but think about it. The Foot and other Mobsters live in New York and have families too. What happens if, like, someone's nondescript wife and kid are here and overhear you?"

"Oh," Shadow realized. "I gotta _really_ not say stuff in the reptile house."

Sandro nodded, and took one long look at the crocodiles before turning his excitement towards the building.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Wildcard called them back. "Wait."

"What?" Shadow protested. "Is one moving? Nothing's happening. They're exactly the same."

"Wait," Wildcard insisted.

Before Shadow could protest again, a panel in the roof of the exhibit opened, and all of the crocodiles moved like lightning—terrifyingly quickly, like packed fish, like they were in fast-forward—and twisted about to the size of gigantic hunks of pink meat coming in through the ceiling panel on hooks.

The crocs _jumped_ for the meat. Shadow whooped and began urging them on like pro wrestlers.

"Wild." Sandro stared. " _Daisuki desu._ "

"Hee, I know."

His phone bleeped, and he took it out and passed it to her to please answer it for him.

* * *

The World of Reptiles had very dim overhead lightning, which helped when Sandro had to lean over or crouch down to get a good look into the glass apertures of some of the smaller exhibits. He made sure his hood was high, his collar was upright, and his gloves were raised to act as 'blinders' to keep out excess light so he could get a perfect look through the glass. Wildcard stayed at his elbow like an over-attached girlfriend.

"Are you tuned in?" Sandro asked her. "Come on, I'm doing good, right?"

She grinned. "Much better than earlier." She acquiesced to his request to pay more attention to the animals. "I don't think you own one like this."

"Nope," Sandro mimed drawing the fan of skin around it's neck. "That's a King Cobra. People don't usually _flush_ exotic or illegal snakes so much as they either just stop feeding them or... abandon them somewhere in the forest, which is usually a death sentence, or, rarely, an ecological disaster. Fish are like the only exception, we get lots of rare fish."

"Is that where Sensei's koi came from?" she realized.

"Some of them," Sandro lowered his voice. "Usagi gave him the first two, but I'm sure the added help prevent inbreeding. There like fifty now."

"Who or what is 'Usagi?'"

Sandro looked up from the display. Wildcard was conveniently in the way of any possible viewer. Both of them knew that; they were back in the jive of hanging out together topside. "We need to start telling you more stories," Sandro said.

"Yes," Wildcard agreed flatly and automatically. "Double triple quadruple yes."

"Usagi's like... well, his _peer,_ as a swordsman? But also probably his best friend. They're very similar to eachother," Sandro explained. "But he lives in Japan, so they mostly communicate by post."

"Sensei has _friends?!_ " Wildcard whispered in disbelief.

"One. Who lives in Japan."

Wildcard thought about this. "Oh." It seemed strange to her, this part of her Sensei's life rooted on a very real Earth which she knew nothing about. Friends she knew nothing about. "Do they ever see one another?"

"Usually at Christmas parties," Sandro specified as the moved exhibits.

"Cue my Grinch Smile," Wildcard murmured wondrously.

* * *

"You said 'red-eared slider' was a random thing for the comic books, right?" Wildcard whispered as they huddled together looking from exhibit to exhibit of turtle. "Obviously none of you have the facial patterns, flat shells, or red ear marks."

"Yeah, but it's the most familiar domesticated turtle in America, so it made sense," Sandro explained. "We shouldn't talk about this in here."

"I'm being careful. No one's behind us." Wildcard looked up. "The East Asian Wood Turtle," she uttered.

"You remember that?-Oh!" He'd looked up, too, and realized Wildcard wasn't just _remembering_.

For a very good reason, neither Sandro nor anyone in his family had ever seen an East Asian Wood Turtle in person before. They were the closest things the turtles had to _ancestors,_ but they were veritably unknown outside of China, unprotected, unstudied, and presumably on the verge of extinction. Donatello had explained there'd been some ill-fated conservation effort to revive them over thirty years ago, and that the leftover breeding stock from that lab had been used as the starting point for mutagen research. The turtles themselves were genetically-engineered piecemeal hybrids, made from snappers, sea turtles, box turtles, and everything outside and between, but it had all started from an East Asian Wood Turtle ovum.

So... Holy crap. This was uncanny. "They're so orange and black," he whispered wonderously. "I mean I knew they must have been, they live in fallen leaves and hunt bugs, but... Wow."

"Their pointed noses are adorable. 'Part of an intern-national c-conservation effort,'" Wildcard read. "'W-wood turtles are as smart as rats!'"

"You're kidding me. It actually says _that?"_ Sandro blurted, looking to the animal card. "'One of the most intelligent reptiles in the world, the terrestrial wood turtle can solve mazes with the same success rate as rats. They can find their way home even if artificially displaced by many miles. Wood turtles have an unusually high adult survival rate, but juveniles and hatchlings are more at risk. Owe to slow reproduction rates, some populations are endangered.'"

"Oh my gawd," Wildcard wheezed.

"'Wood turtles become sexually mature between 14 and 18 years of age.' Ha, Wild, listen to this: 'Although males establish hierarchies, they are not territorial.'"

"Oh my _gawwwddd,_ " she was laughing into her hand. "W-we need to photograph this...!" Sandro cleared his throat, and Wildcard looked at him. "What?"

"Oh, just... the last line's about looking closely because it's spring, and you might see courtship behaviors which involve several hours of dancing and face-biting."

Wildcard held a straight face. Yessir! Poker face, right there. Totally straight.

Thankfully(?), Shadow distracted them.

* * *

"Guys!" Shadow shouted right as a new set of families was trying to enter the turtle room, and several mothers leaped in alarm. A child started crying. Shadow was oblivious.

"Shad," Sandro droned dutifully, turning around. "C'mon, voice down."

"Honestly, what _do_ you need me for?" Wildcard whispered as she took a quick picture of the East Asian Wood Turtles and their placard.

"Something's wrong with this turtle!" Shadow complained loudly of one of the large exhibits filled with larger Red Eared Sliders. "It's got some kind of fish or leech stuck on it, look at it!"

"I'm sure it's _fine,_ " Wildcard said, but when she turned around and found Sandro staring across the room at the exhibit with his head cocked to the side, she raised a brow and decided he was safe enough standing in place for the time being and she could hurry over and see what had upset him and Shadow both. Was it possible one of the red-eared sliders had shell rot and some of it was hanging off? That might explain it.

"It's this one," Shadow waved her over and pointed, and Wildcard docked her head in examination of one of the tank's largest turtles. It appeared to be face-to-face with another large turtle, long front claws extended to tap rather gently at it's tank buddy's face. That was weird, but it wasn't what Shadow was talking about. "What is that? Is it a leech?"

"Holy crap!" Wild ducked slightly. "I have no idea. What-what _is_ that? It looks like a flower from the bottom of the ocean decided to randomly anchor onto this dude's carapace."

"Oh my god it's like the Kraang." Shadow whispered loudly, sounding very much like Mikey in that moment. "Is the turtle going to be okay?"

"I dunno, it's almost as long as the turtle is! It's as thick as it's _leg_."

"It's like a giant evil purple alien space worm," Shadow agreed.

It was the word 'worm' which settled in upon Wildcard's brain and echoed there for a bit.

There, before them, wheezing open and closed like some kind of symbiotic, monstrous flower, or a gramophone at the end of an old record player, or a frighteningly large leech, or a comically gigantic piece of bok choi; and colored everything from a white lavender to a dark octopus purple to a rich inky black; and on second glance attached to the _tail_ and not to the carapace itself; was what _appeared_ to be...

Wildcard turned around slowly, nose and brow wrinkled thoughtfully, in perplexed disbelief, in denial. She turned hesitantly to look back across the room and hoards of unsettled people at Hamato Sandro. She pointed hesitantly at the turtle, and tilted her head in mute question. Sandro didn't answer. He was standing there like a deer in headlights: In shock, unthinking, head slightly tilted as if in disbelief, looking almost on the verge of a panic attack. He was suffering from so much tunnel vision it took him about fifteen second to even notice she was looking at him.

'god plz strike me ded,' Sandro's face said.

Zoogoers were terrified in great numbers that fine noontime, not because their children were subjected to the sight of turtle mating dances, but because Shadow had _nothing_ on to the Crown Princess of Laughs when it came to obnoxiously loud volumes, and Wild, well, Wild pretty much lost it.


	8. The Zoo - Part 4

"Hmm," Mr. Hamilton peered suspiciously over at April's phone as she placed her order. "Do you have phone screen that can only be viewed from a single sweet spot?"

"I do indeed," April confirmed, a little dryly. "Comes with the family job plan. Did you want to see something?" She turned her phone so he could.

"Oh-ho. As I suspected, that is _not_ your son replying to you," Mr. Hamilton said with an authoritative tilt of his chin. "'Four salads, no dressing,' can only be the work of one individual. No one else would be so diabolical as to get their best friend an extra large serving of iceberg lettuce, soggy croutons, and paltry carrot shavings from McDonald's, whilst simultaneously knowing she has _two_ cheeseburgers waiting for her that she'll be able to soften the prank with by sharing."

April hesitated and eyed the text. "I had a feeling something was up with that," she admitted at a mutter, sounding disappointed and distracted. "Hey, can you take those off the order?" she asked the cashier. "Let me just text the fam instead."

Mr. Hamilton was pretty sure the Hamato family would have had difficulty bringing Sandro to a McDonald's in the past, and might take a minute or two to compile a hypothetical order. He glanced back at the long line of disgruntled middle aged persons and crying children behind them, and then gently tugged on April's arm.

"Why don't you wing it," he suggested, "and surprise him? Your kid can put away at least half as much again as my can, right? Why don't you just pick on of the big sandwich value meals, like the quarter pounder, and top it off with a normal salad with chicken tenders?"

"Sounds about right." She thought back, possibly to times in which his father and uncles had been young enough to have similar metabolisms and then grinned at him. "Hey. Thanks, Andrew."

"Oh, think nothing of it," he dismissed with a flutter of his eyes and a flick of his hand. "With my troublemaker on the loose, we're going to need all the help we can get. Should I be _warning_ Mr. Jones?"

April laughed. "Casey's his own terrible influence," she said with a wink. "If the kids end up in a belching competition over lunch, we'll know exactly who done it."

* * *

They heard Wildcard before they saw her, and Mr. Hamilton looked up from the order he'd been checking. "Speak of the devil," he remarked.

Sandro reached the dining plaza sight carrying Wildcard over his shoulder like a burlap sack. He had a tight grasp fastened on her hip so she'd stay up there, and his knuckles probably would have been white had they been visible. Everything about his posture and determined stride said he was presently feeling explosive; his eyes, when they got a glimpse in his hood, were livid. Wildcard was laughing like a person really oughtn't laugh in public, or, at least, not while trying to avoid attention.

"Sandro?" April asked, standing up to intercept him with a worried expression.

"I need five minutes," he said as his companion wheezed for air over his shoulder.

"To do...?" April prompted.

"Five minutes," her son growled inarticulately, and then stomped past them to go find some secluded corner where few other people were.

April looked to her fellow parents in alarm. "Should someone go with them?"

"Hell no!" Casey answered. "Did you see his face? Kid needs five minutes, Ape!"

April threw her hands in the air, trying to figure out why two separate people seemed to think 'five minutes' was a valid explanation for where her child was going to be, when she was supposed to be keeping him self _without_ four superhuman ninja relatives around for backup, and needed to be completely on top of the day's plan! She grabbed for her phone and began rapidly texting with her husband. Then, suddenly, Shadow had skid to a halt at the table, demanding, "What happened!?"

"We were just about to ask you," Mr. Hamilton admitted.

"I don't know! We were at a turtle exhibit and something was wrong, the turtle had this giant Kraang worm thing growing off of it like a man eating plant—"

It was at this point April was jarred off her security planning and rapid texts with family members. For a second, she thought she must have misheard. Then a rosey glow crept up on her face, and her stare went dead and glassy. She gave a shake of her head, cleared her throat, scratched at her brow to half cover her face, and looked away.

"—And then she just went crazy, laughing, and he grabbed her up and charged off without saying a thing!" Shadow complained. "What happened, do you guys understand!?"

"Ooh," Mr. Hamilton winced sympathetically down at the little girl, over at a bashful April, and then back at a still-completely-lost Casey. "Tag. Not it."

* * *

The laughing had fallen to normal decibel levels soon after the initial outburst, but persisted for so long and at such a hysterical cadence, that Sandro managed to wait in line at an ice cream truck, purchase two waffle cones of vanilla ice cream, pay for them, thank the man, grab extra extra extra napkins, and stomp back over to where he'd left her sitting on a curb bordering a green lawn, flower bed and some tidy bushes. She was sighing heavily in and out to herself, and had probably nearly passed out from lack of oxygen.

He passed her her cone, made sure she wasn't so light-headed she dropped it, and then sat down next to her and licked his ice cream in brooding silence.

When she could breathe properly, she licked around her ice cream cone to prevent it from dripping.

They ate their ice cream side by side, with Sandro using discretion and napkins to hide the lower half of his face.

"I need to apologize, _"_ she finally said. "That was mean of me."

Sandro grunted.

"No, _really,_ " she insisted. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, yeah," he answered, paving over embarrassment with annoyance. " _Whatever,_ Ana."

"Uh oh, I'm in trouble. Well look here: I'm _not_ sorry I reacted to such an awkward topic by making it hilarious, that's my usual shtick."

He turned a sour eye on her. "What the fuck _are_ you sorry for, then? Cause let me tell you, that was the least-"

"Two things," she said with a raise of two fingers.

Sandro eyed them doubtfully, but let her continue.

"One: I know that being different from other people has a large, pervasive, negative impact on your life, and so laughing at turtle anatomy in front of you was like the very definition of insensitive, and you deserve better of your best friend."

Sandro eyed the ground, and then glanced back up at her, and then went back to his ice cream. "N'kay," he growled, agreeing that she had something there.

"Number Two: I think there's a poll somewhere proving Man's biggest fear is Woman laughing at what he's got in his pants."

Sandro tensed up angrily.

"Like, you don't even want to discuss kissing, and that isn't just because your beak shape makes you insecure; it's also because you also don't really want to be kissing anyone. We've talked about this. Our mutual affection-stuff isn't romantic, and we don't like anyone insinuating it is. There's like a whole spectrum of reasons why me laughing right then was morally wrong." Dramatic pause. "That was a penis, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Sandro croaked, fight gone out from within him. "That was absolutely a penis."

"I had no idea anything in the animal kingdom would be configured to look and operate like that," Wild said dazedly, eyes widening at her memories.

"Can we not talk about it?" he asked, uncomfortable.

"Why?" she asked him in alarm. "Did you not see that thing, that was tremendously colorful, enormous, exciting, and terrifying, how can I not have commentary?! Maybe just tell me what not to say so I don't offend you."

He recoiled, and said nothing.

"Wait: Are you actually going to leave me _wondering_ about your... _?_ I mean, it's your call, but I'm not sure that's _safe,_ I might ask someone else in a fit of mania; imagine how that'd go down. Poor Donnie, I can see it now."

Sandro shifted his weight from side to side, grimacing through a hard blush, staring at the pavers between his feet.

"I mean obviously _you_ were conceived, so obviously nobody swung full turtle biology on that one. Uh. San? Sandro?"

"I. I-I don't actually know," he mumbled. She blinked. He shrugged a little, very uncomfortable. "What it looks like. I don't know."

"Oh." Her brow furrowed and she titled her head. "Wait, cue me in how that's possible?"

"Like I sit on toilets to pee," he explained bitterly, "that's not something it's used for."

"Oh. Ohhhh," her eyes widened. "And we're only _just reaching_ the age where... you might eventually meet it. Because of. Special dreams. And you haven't, yet."

"Yeah."

"I see." Pause. "Anyway, despite being morally wrong, I totally had to laugh, no regrets," Wild suddenly re-transgressed, and Sandro nearly punched her in retaliation. "There was no way to react to anything that unexpected except to laugh! It was the only thing I _could_ do! The awkwardness was too great. It was the only way to shield our innocence! Also, it kept us from having to explain the matter to Shadow. Don't you glare at me, I had a moment where I realized I'd been getting flashed, I'm allowed to be anything from shocked to traumatized to valiantly amused, dammit!"

Sandro sniffed angrily, once. Then he sidled closer to his companion, and put an arm around her shoulders. She took his napkins and helped him shield his face.

"If I'm being honest," Wild said, dabbing vanilla off his chin, "I don't know much about myself either. Your uncle is the family doctor, right? He's _got_ to have suites of diagrams laying around."

"Yeah," Sandro supposed, bitterly. "Who's to say I'm not different?"

"Well, it'd give you a _ballpark guess,"_ she had to say, "at least then you don't have to _worry_ and _wonder_ about it or anything."

"Why the hell would I even _think_ about it after this conversation stopped?" he growled.

"Gee, Sandro," she nestled into him. "I don't know. Why would _anybody_ possibly be concerned about their bodies? God knows I'm not! It's not like I'm four-foot eleven and still don't have boobs or anything."

His grouchiness fragmented, and he took in a deep breath and huffed it out. "I'm plenty ugly, already got that down pat, don't need to ask for an exact inventory on what showed up on the freakazoid roster."

"Sandro!" she protested, brows creasing as she looked up at him. "C'mon, you're totally handsome."

"Just shut up, Wild, don't need to hear it, get enough of it from my mom. I don't have enough facial attributes to _be_ handsome with. The only reason anyone here isn't running and screaming from me is because I'm caked in a liter of makeup."

She stared at him for a surprisingly long length of time. Long enough that Sandro started feeling self conscious about it, wondering what she was thinking (and what she saw).

"Say something," he begged, regretful.

She tapped his arm, and turned, gesturing with her elbow to a gaggle of older girls with nice hair, nice winter coats, and nice shoes and jewelry, who seemed to be gossiping together with eye-rolls and glances towards parents and younger kids. One or two of them had been glancing as if with annoyance in his direction, he now realized, but now suddenly several of them perked up, and all of them smiled and glanced to one another. He stiffened.

"Do you see them?" she asked. "See how their death glares all mysteriously turned into excitement?"

"What's it mean?" he asked, wary.

"They're flirting with you. They'll muss their hair and bite their lips a lot. See? Told you," Wildcard explained with a winding gesture of her finger, and Sandro's stomach turned over in disbelief. "You have a voice as rich and lovely as red-velvet cake, and you are tall and broad-shouldered and have a lovely bone structure from your tight waist, to your long limbs, to the shape of your eyes."

Sandro looked to Wild, shocked.

"But the way you and I are sitting and sharing food all cuddly-like makes it look like I'm your girlfriend," Wild stated matter-of-factly, with a wink past him at where those girls were sitting. "So they're jealous. Ha! She just stomped off. She already tried to sneak a picture; I got napkins in the way and she got _pissed._ "

He swallowed. "Boy," he muttered shakily, "would they be disappointed to learn the truth."

"All of that _is_ the truth," she said. "You really are handsome. If they don't find your shell equally attractive, that's their loss." She tapped his prosthetic nose. "Your ice cream's dripping, bro."


	9. The Zoo - Part 5

Awkward silence permeated the Lair, broken only by Discovery Channel narration and four chirping children who were now off watching a National Geographic program entirely about alligators.

Mikey's chair creaked loudly as he turned around to peek up at the older two brothers.

Leonardo probably would have slunk off a long time ago (no interest on spying on his family members, yo) if he wasn't secretly really worried about Sandro and April's safety half a city away. Right now, Blue Leader was buried in the world's most sympathetic face palm.

Beside him, Raphael had one half of his mouth turned up in that sort of half-wincing expression reserved for times when something was kinda hilarious and absolutely horrible at the same time. His face could have been captioned with 'well that escalated quickly.'

"I'm going to call him," Donatello finally spoke, as he reached around himself for his phone, and Mikey whipped around and grabbed prohibitively at his elbow.

"And say _what_?" Raphael wondered incredulously, lifting both hands to cup the back of his own head, elbows out. "Exactly what d'ya think ya could make dis less awkward?"

"Something, anything! We haven't even done the birds and the bees conversation with him yet, he's flying blind out there!"

Mikey choked inhaling on a laugh, and sputtered 'so were we!' as Donnie fought for that phone.

"He's gonna light up red as Christmas just ta realize ya _know_ what happened!" Raphael scolded, still watching the screen. "He ain't gonna wanna talk ta _you_!"

"Well then _you_ call him!" Donnie offered him the phone.

"With this friend right there?" Raphael creaked, lifting both hands like his brain had just been blown. "What am I gonna say, 'na don't worry it ain't that bad, chillax' ?"

"I-I could text him then! Numeric specifications, very dry!"

"Why in the name of all our ancestors," Leo uttered, "do you think that would be _comforting?"_

"He's Donnie," Mikey explained, "numbers comfort Donnie."

Donatello looked back at that phone, rapidly dialing. "He's humiliated, confused, uninformed, and a girl is laughing at him; I have to do something!"

"He's in a public place, dis ain't da time ta-! Hey! Put that down before ya hurt yaself!" Raphael grabbed Donatello. "Or _I_ hurt ya! Don't ya _dare_ call him, ya nut! Not - Helping!"

* * *

'Honey? ? ? o.o' ' April spammed confused icons into their chat, wondering at the abrupt radio silence.

'Yo, had to fight Donnie. Leo and Mikey are sitting on him until he stops trying to call Sandro."

April choked a laugh, and glanced over at where a very red-faced Casey was awkwardly explaining everything Shadow needed to know to Shadow. 'I understand where the urge comes from.'

'Where we at?' Raphael asked. 'Did you say anything to him?'

'I'm giving him some space. Opposite of controlling, right?'

'Right.' Pause. 'Do you know where he is?'

Nervously she admitted, 'Nope.'

Long Pause. Then Raphael blew up the phone with a wall of text that said 'dontpanicdontpanicdontpanicdontpanic' over and over and over again, with a tiny panicked face afterwards. April snickered, and breathed in deep, feeling the same, but—at the same time—telling herself that Sandro was old enough to look after himself for a little bit, and that he'd managed to do so in the past.

"Are you really texting?" Andrew Hamilton asked her. "I don't think I've ever seen someone compose bulk messages with their thumbs that fast."

April laughed, and smiled over at him. "Hubby and I don't actually get to see each other much over the work day," she explained, "but we're always tightly coordinated and we chat a lot. If you think I'm impressive, you should see _him._ Good thing, too, or he'd be miserably bored."

"I've seen Mikey, and that's already impressive," Andrew admitted.

April was trying not to wear her nerves on her sleeve. "You really helped put Mikey in a dress?"

"And did the eye shadow, naturally," he agreed with a wink.

She laughed, and wondered if Mr. Hamilton wasn't just a little bit more effeminate talking to her than to Casey. "I never properly thanked you for the foam latex cast you made," she recalled. "For Sandro."

Andrew scoffed agreeably. "That boy deserves to be able to play outside," he conspired with her, "and if my mediocre knowledge of special effects makeup can help you and him out with that, then it has been an _honor_ to serve. Mn! I think you have another message."

'What's your plan?' Raphael's accent was also imperceptible in text conversations; he'd long ago given up fighting auto-correct.

'I think I need not to be embarrassed on his behalf,' she hurried nervously to text. 'I don't want him to feel invisible, but I think respecting his 'space' is what he actually wants.'

'Yeah,' Raphael agreed. 'If he's moody as fuck when he gets back, just be ultra hands-off. Sometimes it takes going to the opposite extreme to shift back to center. If his mood's really bad, don't even try to joke with him or comment on the weather or shit, just let him cool off into the silence.'

'Quick question: What if she's still teasing him? Or being inappropriate?' April wondered.

'Damn. Gonna have to say let her dad handle it," Raphael decided. 'Sandro's got to be ready to hear your voice before you risk saying anything, or he'll just convince himself you aren't listening. This isn't a single day fix.'

'I agree,' she concurred.

'If he's not back in five minutes,' Raphael texted.

'Don't panic 3,' April texted back.

'I'm going to panic,' Raphael lamented meekly.

* * *

Sandro led the way back to the lunch table, subdued and introspective instead of embarrassed. He caught sight of his mother, looking like she had ants in her pants, and he took in a deep breath and straightened.

"Did five minutes help?" she asked as she stood and waved them close. There was a _smile_ at her mouth, like she'd actually looked at him, and seen he was calm, and was fishing for whether he could laugh about the whole thing yet.

Whatever Sandro had thought to say, it turned into a heavy exhale instead. Then he cocked his head and smirked. "Yeah. Thanks, mom. Was enough time for _this idiot_ to calm down, too"

"I apologized!" Wildcard announced factually. "And managed to rescue my all-essential BFF status after an admittedly dubious first reaction to the subject matter! Man, I'm awesome, not many people could have pulled that off, did you guys hear me? Phew! Hey! Food!"

Sandro rattled his head with a roll of his eyes, and gave his 'little sister' a light hit upside the back of the head, but ultimately just shoved her forward so they could both eat.

April welcomed him to the table, and pushed McDonald's bags in front of him like she was hoping to see his reaction. Sandro raised a brow and looked down at the bag. The only logical explanation dawned on him, and he turned to look at Wild in alarm.

"Did Mom text me?" he asked the miniature monster whom espoused to be his best friend. "Did she ask what I wanted from McDonald's?"

Wildcard looked up from her cheeseburgers and gulped. Then she smiled broadly and tossed up her arms. "With friends like me, who needs enemies!?" she squealed.

Sandro pulled back a fist.

"Rest assured your lunch was saved from sabotage," Mr. Hamilton drawled, amused, as Wildcard squealed and shielded her head. "Your mother didn't take the bait."

"Turtles eat salad! I know, I watched him feed Spike!" Wildcard said from half under the table.

"Spike's a tortoise!" Sandro scolded and kicked Wildcard, but then glanced in surprise to his mom, and hesitantly took the bag to peer inside. He told himself not to let his expression fall, even if he didn't like what she'd gotten for him. He wasn't exactly sure what his mom would order. In his limited experience, she'd go for a 'healthy' option, whether he liked it or...

It was a perfectly good burger, fries, extra ketchup packets and napkins, and an extra salad with breaded chicken. It was literally every possible option, and lots of it. He lifted his head and grinned up at her.

"Thanks mom," he said, and he meant it, and it felt _real_ when she smiled back and didn't feel the need to say anything more.

"I would have shared my cheeseburgers," confessed Wildcard from under the table.

"Yeah I'm sure you woulda," Sandro growled as he unwrapped his burger. "If only to save me from breakin' ya nose."

She giggled and crawled back up to sit beside him, and 'the incident,' for the most part, was forgotten.

Except for the part where Shadow was shooting them both weird looks over the table. Casey must have told her not to ask them a ton of questions. Casey sure didn't ask any questions. He busied himself with a burger and seemed vicariously embarrassed on Sandro's behalf, which only made Sandro want to laugh.

* * *

By closing hour, they'd seen quite literally everything in the zoo, from the jungle world to the savanna lions, and taken close to a zillion selfies. Mr. Hamilton X-ed off the very last exhibit from the itinerary and showed April, and together they were impressed by their children's successful wholesale coverage of the zoo's sights.

"Well," Andrew said, as they made their way back to the parking lot, "I'm to understand there's a small trip through Little Italy planned?"

Wildcard froze. "There's a _what_?" she demanded.

"Cheese," Sandro said, draping an arm comfortably over her shoulder, and gesturing out with the flat of his hand to indicate a world of possibilities. "Cheese and noodles _everywhere."_

"Oh my gawd," Wildcard stood in awe of the imagined world of possibilities.

"Are we gonna grab some dinner?" Casey wondered.

"Not this time around," April said with a tilt of her head towards Sandro. "Not in a small bistro in Little Italy. But we've a late dinner planned when we get home. Would you and Shadow like to come?"

"Yeah," Shadow said. "Duh! I love hanging out with you guys!"

"I think we're in," Casey agreed. "What about you?" he asked Andrew Hamilton. "Your family free for dinner?"

Andrew shrugged and gave a discrete glance out the corner of his eye at April, wordlessly asking for her to signal how she actually felt about this and whether Casey was allowed to invite people over to other people's houses. She smiled. Today had been a very nice outing, and she was feeling a lot more confident both about Sandro's trips topside and the family of the little girl he'd befriended.

"Why don't you come?" she encouraged. "Both of you."

"Well," Andrew said. "I will have to leave early to arrive in time for my work shift, but I can come over for about an hour. _If,"_ he raised his voice so his daughter could hear, "we don't overstay Little Italy."

"Ooh," Sandro winced sympathetically, looking down at Wildcard. "Having to choose between ogling fresh handmade pasta and your _own father_."

"Are you _kidding,_ I think this means your uncles are making Italian tonight, let's grab the handmade pasta and the best cheese in the city and go!"

"And sausage," April said. "Raphael was adamant about the sausage."

The same dirty joke occurred to Casey and Wildcard simultaneously, and Sandro pulled on the hair of the only one he could reach.

"Yeah, only Raph needs his _wife_ to give him some sausage," Casey muttered, and Wildcard pointed and threw back her head and sagged into Sandro, laughing too hard to actually laugh.

April heaved an exasperated sigh, and then threw a half finished water bottle at Casey's head, getting a bunch of laughter and curses for her effort.


	10. World of Reptiles

Everyone had left for the day and most of the family was winding down for the night. Raphael eased open Sandro's door and leaned in the threshold. Kid looked to be going through his pictures of the day and deleting unnecessary duplicates.

"Hey," Raphael called. "I know ya kinda had a full day today already, but... got time ta talk fah a bit?"

Sandro was a little surprised. "Sure. What about?"

"World of Reptiles."

Sandro turned scarlet. More red than green by a long-shot, a more normal blush than any of the older turtles had. "Oh."

"S'kinda my job as ya dad," Raphael explained, "ta eventually say somethin' or another on the subject. Talk with ya about it."

"It's the digital age," Sandro tried to head him off. "I have the internet."

"Yeah, well, ain't we both in luck Wikipedia ain't got the manual on the 'teenage mutant turtle' bit."

Poor kid panicked. "Uh, look, I-I don't wanna-"

"I know," Raphael said, and left it at that for a second, gathering his thoughts. "S'not exactly somethin' people _want_ to talk about with their parents, but, uh... I'm _quite literally_ the only person there is in the world ta ask who can say anythin' authoritative on the topic. Uh. Well, that or ya mom, but I'm sure that ain't any better."

Sandro looked like life had just given him lemons, and he was hating every tongue-curdling bite of them. "You. You don't have to."

"I know I don't _have_ to, I survived my own da not knowing much about what ta tell _me_. But figurin' it out ourselves, even just the puberty part... yeah, parts of that were real rough."

Sandro was silent, staring at the ground, still looking completely, like, _mortified_.

"Look," Raphael cleared his throat. "I know this ain't a conversation you're wantin' ta have, but... uh... I'll tell it like it is. Shit I wouldn't usually say, not in normal everyday conversation, stuff I wouldn't even admit ta my brothers. S'up ta you, kid. You got a question, I'll answer."

Kid was quiet a minute more. Like a full sixty seconds, that type of minute. Then he lifted his head and winced up at Raphael almost pleadingly. "Can this conversation wait another year?" he asked. "I appreciate, and I kinda do get why it's important, even if I'm embarrassed, but the truth is I don't really want to have it yet. I don't even want to think about... that."

"Sure." Raphael lingered, hesitant. "Anythin ya _did_ want ta ask, before I go mark 'awkward talk with Sandro' on my calendar sometime November 2019?"

Sandro chewed the edge of his beak and looked down.

That sort of looked like a 'yes but it's gonna take me a second ta say it out loud,' so Raphael waited.

"You..." Sandro took in a deep breath. "You got a lot taller from sixteen to twenty-one," he blurted.

"Uh... yeah." Raphael had a feeling he knew where this question was headed. "Final adult growth spurt was almost closer ta twenty-two for me. Mikey shot up right at twenty-one."

"And that wasn't... you know," Sandro asked, "a problem?"

"Took, um, took some getting used to." Raphael would have been as red as his bandanna if he hadn't been green to start with, "Have ta realize I was a head _shorter_ than ya mom at sixteen."

Sandro looked up at him in surprise.

"Yeah," Raphael confirmed. "Weighed more! But... she hit her adult height _way_ before us. We age a little slower than humans. We hit full adulthood a little slower, too. And ya ma ain't short."

"But it... worked."

"Well obviously."

"And it still works. It's not like I'm on... on some kind of timer," Sandro concluded nervously, confirming what he'd been worried about: size differences.

The answer to the whole question was kind of important. "Look, um, Sandro... Not gonna lie ta you, and nevah tell ya mom I said dis by the way, but I'd imagine it's a little easier pickin' up the basics before ya got ya full height."

"The basics?"

"How ta start n' how ta finish n' what ta do in between. With the average young person, there's so much unnecessary sexual tension in everything, s'like releasing a wind-up toy, zip, off it goes! I didn't have ta know what da fuck I was doin da first time, just um," cough, "stuffed it all together whatever way it seemed ta make sense. When ya thirty and six hundred pounds, takes a bit more understandin' of the principles. All that said, it ain't somethin' ta be scared of, ya don't have to be in a rush the second ya turn eighteen. If it takes a bit, then just take it in baby steps."

Sandro suddenly frowned at him.

"What?"

The kid shifted slightly in place. "You and mom were both _sixteen._ "

Raphael bristled. "We had no business doing what we did, we was _kids._ "

Sandro continued to frown at him, like he'd just heard something he wasn't sure he was okay with but also wasn't entirely ready to fight about. "It's not like I _want_ to have sex with anyone," he preemptively defended himself, like he wasn't arguing against no more than hypocrisy.

Parenting was hard. Raphael let out a hard breath through his nose. "Seventeen," he growled. "Any earlier and I'mma kick ya tail so hard ya won't be havin' sex again till ya fifty."

The kid considered this and then seemed to feel it was a good compromise between retrospect and reality. "Fair. If, you know, if there even _is_ somebody."

Raphael eyed him up and down. "I don't think we'd need ta even have this talk if there weren't already 'somebody.'"

Kid looked back to him in a flash. "It's not like that," he said, face darkening.

"Not yet, I should _hope_ not," Raphael snickered. "But, kid-"

"It doesn't ever have to be like that!" Sandro said with a jump to his feet, like he was ready to fight about it.

Raphael lifted both hands placatingly. Whoa there, easy tiger! "Ya ain't got feelings for ya Mouse?"

"No."

"Don't lie ta me kid."

"I don't have _any_ sexual feelings for her. _Nothing._ "

Raphael wasn't so sure, but he backpedaled as a thought occured to him. "N'what about, like, ya know, just _romantic_?"

Sandro hesitated, not sure how to answer. Maybe he hadn't expected anyone to decouple the two things from eachother.

"A'ight," Raphael shrugged. "Ain't gonna put words in ya mouth. Didn't have any kind of feelin' ta ya ma at fourteen either. Took me awhile just ta warm up to her."

"It took _you_ time to warm up to _her_?"

"Ha!" Raphael grinned. "Takes me awhile to like _anybody_. Not sayin' I was any kind of desirable! Hell, what ya ma sees in me, that I might nevah know."

Sandro frowned. "When... when did you _tell_ mom you loved her?"

Raphael was surprised by the question. Then, embarrassed, he admitted, "Like aftah you was born. When she woke up from the coma."

Kid's snout wrinkled. "When did you tell her you had feelings for her?"

"I _didn't_ ," Raph blurted. "My feeling's for your mom was in the vein of 'Raph, ya throwin yaself under a bus wantin somethin ya got no business wantin, when ya best friend an ya brother are _both_ in love with her."

"But then what happened? You got together with her. _Obviously._ "

"Yeah. I left the farmhouse after an argument to go cool off. Figured I'd rub one out in the barn. April followed cause she weren't done arguing, had another bone or two or five ta pick with me about 'my behavior,' and when I finally couldn't take smelling her in the same room a second longer, much less tryin' ta argue back, I shouted for her to get the fuck away from me, fuck off, and go bother Casey or Donnie before I untailed right in front of her. Then she kissed me. And then we fucked ourselves sore in the hay and I asked her WTF just happened afterwards."

Sandro's face went slack and he blinked. "Oh," he said quietly. "Ew."

"Yeah," Raphael grimaced. "And then we had you on the way. Not that we knew that for another couple months."

"It was _then!_?"

"Yeah, that or later that week I guess. It wasn't iffy at all, your conception. Mutagen woke up and went 'turtle human baby? hold my beer, i done this before.' I didn't even know what a pregnancy test looked like. Donnie did, but all he did was run up ta her and shout 'that's not possible!' as he took it and read from it, and I'm like 'chill don, what could possibly be so exciting about a stick, does she have cancer?' Casey explained it was a pregnancy test, that it said April was pregnant, and then Mike congratulated Casey, who was all like 'don't look at me, I ain't done it!' Mike was like 'doonnnnniee?' and then April just points at me and Leo speaks up for the first time that week to ask super quiet, 'is this reality?'

"Meanwhile I'm just steadily more gone. Just _gone._ Fixated on the word, 'pregnant' echoing over and over in my head. I'm pretty sure I effectively blacked out about there. Like, I was physically present, and I was awake, but I don't really remember what happened, and I don't think I did anything meaningful or said anything."

"...And this is why I don't have any siblings my own age," it finally all made sense to Sandro, who was staring off into the void reassembling memories of things Raph had previously said. "You weren't even _dating._ "

"Yeeeahhh," Raphael confirmed. "Not gonna lie, probably shoulda planned ta give ya some younger siblings when ya was _five_ and not for when ya was _fifteen,_ but eh... hindsight's twenty-twenty."

"Are you?" Sandro looked up at him. "Are you and mom going to have more kids?"

Raphael hesitated. "You... did say ya'd give ya blessin, but ya was kinda on the spot at the time. Should probably double-check you're okay with the idea."

"I don't want to take care of them," Sandro repeated his terms. "I'm their sibling, not one of _your_ brothers. I won't babysit them, I won't... be obligated to do anything for them. Then it's okay."

"I get it," Raphael told him. "Ya want it to be how it _would_ have been if you'd been born closer together. Then, uh... yeah. Yeah, me and ya mom is gonna give it a shot. Assuming we didn't get baked by too much radiation the last time we ended up in space," he winked, "and you weren't a one-time-only miracle baby, should work about the same."

"Cool." Sandro smiled a bit. "Thanks for talking to me, even if... you know."

"It was as awkward as fuck? Yeah. No problem. I'll still have my calendar marked, 'November 2019, second stage of awkward turtles, humans, birds, and bees conversations.'"

"Don't actually write that anywhere in the Lair," Sandro told him. "Because Wild will somehow see it."

"Ooh. Wouldn't _dat_ be fun."


	11. Thanksgiving - Part 1

"I can't believe that you managed to get off work on a major holiday," Wildcard chirped blithely as she skipped along beside her father with her crowbar upon her shoulder. "Isn't the bar still open?"

"I'm building my report with the owner," her father explained. "And he accepted my demands to have off Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not many people can handle watching over an establishment that seedy, you know, and the old tender was slipping for years."

Wild looked up at Joker wondrously. "Can you just magically make anybody like you?"

"Asks the child who knows all the same tricks," he drawled affectionately, ruffling her hair. "You'll get there, and, what's more: you'll be twice as cute doing it."

She stuck out her tongue. "What about Raphael, or Mr. Jones? They took a liking to you like that!" she snapped her fingers. "Trusted you almost immediately!"

"Oh that was _easy._ " He waved a hand. "Snagging the mother was the real trick."

"They're totally suspicious of new people!" she disagreed, stopping beside the manhole she'd selected for the evening and hooking it under the lip. "How was it easy?"

" _Both_ men have a few important things in common with the kind of raw muscle which once composited my, err, 'following.' I've had the recipe for that seduction baked into the formative substance of my character by now."

"Oh. _Yikes._ "

"Mnhmm. The same thing that attracts thugs can reel in almost anything in the same weight category, _if_ you cook in the right kind of empathy."

" _Empathy?_ "

"Of course, Squirt." He descended the ladder first. "Never let a TV special on sociopaths lead you into the erroneous belief that 'evil people' can't exercise empathy. Empathy leads to very personalized and disturbed crimes. Citations redacted. I share more than a blue collar, lower class, suburban upbringing with Mr. Jones, and more than a cursory knowledge of boxing with Mr. Hamato; the three of us are also fathers."

"But Mrs. O'Neil was the hard sell?" Wild wondered down after him.

"College educated, with a broader horizon, more options, and the mind of a journalist baked into the sheer force of character needed to metamorphose into a major media magnate; plus I had to win her and her husband at the same time, with the same body language and vocal inflections, and she has _good standards_. But I was in luck: I know what it's like to be insecure about one's skill in parenting. Try _not_ to sabotage anything she does for Sandro, by the way... It'll go a long way for you and her to be on the same 'side.'"

Wildcard pursed her lips thoughtfully as she dragged the manhole cover over them. Then she slid all the way to the ground. "How's the yams?" she asked.

"Secure! I can only pray there's enough," he confessed of the giant Tupperware he was carrying. "And that Sunshine doesn't inexplicably pig out on all of them before dinner even starts. You know, Squirt, the way people _see_ you really is up to you," her father told her, no longer eager to compare relationship maintenance to manipulation. She hadn't been impressed the last two times, and he was a faster learner. "It's not enjoyable being at the mercy of some message you unknowing send out _._ Seizing control of that message isn't immoral; it's a form of self-awareness."

"I guess that makes sense," she agreed with a mischievous smile as she pulled out her white bandanna and pulled it on over her head. "What should I practice being seen as today, do you think?"

"Something scandalous, naturally." Joker winked at her. "We can't have any new 'family members' getting the wrong impression about whether Sandro's met a _nice girl_ , can we, 'Anastasia Hamilton?'"

"Tehe-hehe-heee!"

* * *

'Mr. Hamilton' frowned.

Their first indication something was most likely wrong came when Michelangelo didn't intercept them halfway to the turtle homestead to walk them the rest of the way. They reached the front door on their lonesome, with no one to welcome them in. Interesting. No defensive turrets, bullet holes, or other signs of external confrontation were visible. No one had messaged him with any kind of rain check or heads up. Wildcard was clearly nervous, and stealing glances at her own phone.

"Should I just open the door?" she asked.

"What kind of Hoodlum have I raised? Naturally, one should always _knock first_ upon arriving at another person's house."

"Dad, I think it's like six inches of blast resistant and sound proofed steel. Donnie has the place set up like a bunker to resist spying or intrusion"

"Well how else are you going to be able to honestly, and in good conscious, tell them 'I tried knocking,' if you walk in on a murder or some humorous state of undress?" he protested.

"This is _really_ unlike them. Normally Sensei remembers to give people a heads up even when literally every one else forgets."

"Ah. Well, I suppose that means he's embroiled in it."

"In what?" she wondered. "Do you know what's going on?"

"It's Thanksgiving, Squirt," Joker specified. "Maybe someone broke the golden rule about politics and/or religion."

"What's that mean?"

"Let's join them and find out.

"After knocking of course."

 _"Naturally."_

* * *

The air was filled with over-the-top volume levels of raw, emotional screaming rising up in crescendos over soft pleas and hard, firm shouts. The epicenter of the commotion seemed to have detonated halfway down the hallway where the older turtles had their bedrooms. At first the sheer pitch and fervor of the noise—screams, shouts, and everything in between—seemed to render the screaming unintelligible. They realized that this was an _argument,_ and that one of the primary voices—the loudest and shriekiest one—was female.

To top it off, they could hear a baby crying. Somewhere. Several pretty big individuals were in the way, blocking vision of what exactly was going on.

Mr. Hamilton & Daughter politely shuffled in the door, closed it behind them, and began taking off their shoes.

La Angry Female sounded hysterical, accusatory, and kind of out-of-her-mind, and both Hamiltons quickly ruled out April as a potential candidate for the source of all this communication. It was possible this was an extended family member, then. Whoever she was, she was _angry._ She was more than just angry. She sounded like she felt surrounded, unwanted, caged, deceived, patronized, and wronged on every conceivable level from emotional to moral to psychological. She sounded furious and vindictive and destructive about it, like she was going to lay out twenty years of grievances all over the place and perform a righteous smack down like the world hath never seen before.

Wildcard raised a brow slowly up at her father, at a loss for how this was happening.

Mr. Hamilton shrugged gently. "My money's on postpartum."

As their ears had time to adjust, they were starting to pick out more words: "Like _any_ of you have _any_ idea what it's like to be completely alone fighting-" Not all of it made perfect sense, probably because the woman was referencing ancient history and a breadth of incidents/misadventures which the two Hamiltons had minimal knowledge of. They did overhear several savage personal insults in there, ad hominems, one of which Wild was sure was directed at Donatello. It was about intellectually handicapped mouth breather computer addicts who wouldn't know what to do with a woman even if she was gift wrapped for them S&M style.

"Robyn-!"

Apparently this sounded as over-the-top whacky to the Hamato/O'Neil family as it did to Wildcard, because Donatello didn't dignify it with a reply, didn't stop arguing this woman was making a scene and needed to calm down, and didn't even sound humiliated. He sounded like he was getting frustrated and fed-up, if anything. It seemed like Donatello and April were both in the inner circle response team, along with another low, firm, tired voice Wild didn't recognize.

Baffled, Wildcard knew she had to sneak forward to get a better look. So that's what she did, using her small size to her advantage and squeezing around the legs of giants. She heard Shrieky Angry Pants ('Robyn?') turn about with an 'And You!' before she started debriding _Leo_ up and down, saying lots of true-ish things about his emotional IQ, lots of things Wild didn't really understand, and some things that definitely involved words like 'father,' and 'children,' and Splinter's name. Like: "You'll never be a father and with good reason, so shut the fuck up and don't you ever, _ever_ patronize me again by-!"

Wildcard's stomach bottomed out as she realized Donnie hadn't been the original person 'Robyn' had detonated on. With brown eyes furious, her face flushed, her shoulders squared, shaking with her anger, and a baby clutched to her side, Robyn O'Neil was right in Leo's face.

Leo's eyes were cold, piercing as he stared at Robyn. The expression might have looked completely _unfeeling_ if you didn't count how his chin was defensively tucked, his shoulders were artificially squared, and his back was up against the threshold of his room, like he'd been cornered and plastered there by a deluge he'd been helpless to fight back against. Leo had _shut off_ to cope.

Wildcard didn't care what this argument was about.

She didn't care who this new woman was. She didn't care about babies. She had zero curiousity. She had tunnel vision. She ran across the hallway to reach her Sensei's side, grabbed hold of his hand, and pivoted around to hug her support into the side of him, never mind that she only came up to his hip.

Sensei was startled out of his icy stillness, and looked down at her. She squeezed his hand—what she could fit in her own, which was just one finger—and glared. The suddenness of her appearance made 'Robyn' shut up for a sec as new insults needed to occur to her. Wildcard eyed the woman up and down, from the designer cut of her clothing to the baby slumped over her forearm, clasped against her almost like a rag doll, with one hand tight around its midsection but the rest of it looking terribly unsupported. She _looked_ kinda like April, but missing was that aura of competence and legitimacy. No, instead: This woman was trash, and knew she was trash, and she knew everyone else knew she was trash, and still she wanted _them_ to pay for it.

"Yo!" Raphael apparently had seen and heard enough. He thrown down the kiddy gloves he usually handled human family members with, and waded forward to thunder at the hysterical woman himself. That got her attention away from Leo. Raphael was a _boom_ at any distance, and her ear-bleeding shrieking, which had been blowing loud and hard over top of everyone else like a whirlwind no matter how fiercely or calmly or firmly they spoke to her, just couldn't hold up enough volume against Big Red shouting her down. "Ya fuckin' outta ya mind!?"

Shriek shriek shriek, went the woman in response, her words unimportant.

A three-fingered hand closed around Wildcard's. She glanced up at Sensei, and was surprised by the stern gleam in his eye as he hooked her gaze. He gave a quick shake of his head, forbidding something. Wildcard grimaced.

"Ya completely outta control and acting insane!" Wildcard heard.

Shriek shriek! responded the woman. ("How dare you try to turn this against me when _he's_ the one who-!")

"Someone tried ta do ya a fuckin _favor_ and ya tryin' ta tear his head off!" (Shriek shriek shriek-!) "Ya don't want me ta pick ya up and hang ya from da raftahs fah the next hour, ya gonna zip ya mouth shut and sit ya ass down!"

She was vaguely aware of a tumbled commotion, like someone had tried to _attack_ someone else, and then a loud, crisp slap echoed across the room.

Wildcard looked slowly back down, back over at that woman. Raphael had slapped her. With remarkably care, one imagined, seeing as she looked more shocked than instantly dead.

In relative silence, the previously shrieky banshee (Robyn) stood there, rebuked, quaking with the wrath of god in her veins, holding the side of her face with her shoulders scrunched together in moral indignation. Then her feelings caved inward like a hollowed caldera, imploding into sensations which had possessed her and made her their puppet. Hurt by herself more than by them, the woman started crying. Big crying, too, like a toddler at the end of a massive era-defining temper tantrum, or like her heart had been cut out, or like the whole world was ending, right then, right there. Losing big, gulping, traumatized sobs, she folded inward.

Her family shuffled awkwardly around her, initially uncertain whether the episode had ended, the demons had been exorcised, and their loved one now required tender loving care; uncertain whether coming close to hug her would be giving a passively manipulative person exactly what they wanted. Then their hesitation ended rapidly, one member after another, and people embraced the woman, and helped her with the baby, and got her headed towards the kitchen so she could sit down and they could give her something to drink.

Wildcard's vision hand blurred. She wiped her face, and clung to her sensei's hand, and he anchored her there with the unspoken instruction _not to judge_.

Something was wrong with Robyn, but it wasn't necessarily her fault.

...

Attention steered away from the hallway, making breathing room.

Sensei ushered Wild just in the threshold of his door, and stooped down to hide her with his shell as he addressed her: "Are you alright?"

"Are _you_?" she huffed back, glancing around the bedroom and realizing a great many things were odd about it:

There was a very neat futon across the room, and sloppy duffel bags, messy blankets, a pram and diaper bags featured on the regular side. _Light bulb!_ With Leatherhead staying in the guest bedroom, and Raphael and April home for the holiday, there weren't any spare rooms in the Hamato household. Leo, who for hammock-related reasons probably perceived his own room as only one-half maximum capacity, had chivalrously given half his own personal (immaculate) space up so Robyn (a slob from the look of things) would have a place to stay. Heck, it looked like Leo had even given her _his bed,_ and had elected to camp out on the floor instead.

Sensei had seen her attention go roving and waited for her to determine the story for herself. Then he fetched her chin back. "Startled," he admitted, pushing up her bandanna to rub away moisture from her face. "But that is all."

She didn't quite believe him, but maybe he was trying to tell her this wasn't an appropriate time to discuss it. He didn't talk to her about Robyn at all, actually, whether to justify her actions or critique them. He waited for Wildcard's breathing to calm down, and righted her bandanna. Maybe there was some sense in that. Maybe Wild and her faith in humanity were more Leo's business than interpreting Robyn.

"Are you alright?" he asked again.

"Yeah," she mumbled, composing herself. "All that stuff she was saying was garbage. You would make a great dad, Master Leonardo." No past tense about it.

He didn't answer that, but inclined his head lightly as if he wished to express appreciation of her sentiments. Then he stood back up, and turned to free up the exit to suggest they move to the kitchen as well. "Would you make us some tea, my _padawan_?" he asked her. "The 'Tension Tamer' blend may not be FDA approved by our resident genius, but it will at least sooth _my_ nerves with its 'placebo' effects.

"Hee." She smiled, the situation resolving itself internally for her. "Kay," she agreed, and hurried ahead of him to do so.


	12. Thanksgiving - Part 2

Leo watched from the hallway.

Father and daughter moved almost as if independent invitees to the Thanksgiving party that evening. Mr. Hamilton had slipped unobtrusively into the kitchen and was placing a water pitcher into April O'Neil's hands almost before she'd turned around to go fetch it from the refrigerator. He stayed mostly with the human family members and speaking quietly and politely with and around Robyn. Meanwhile, Kinpōge interacted exclusively with turtles, throwing a hug around Sandro and waggling her brows Donatello to earn a scowl and a gentle swat with a Bo.

If the father found it strange that his daughter had run straight into the middle of the confrontation which had had nothing whatsoever to do with her, or taken the hand of an unrelated adult, he gave no indication. He did not regroup with her to ask if she was alright, or to hear the story of the event from her mouth, and she seemed to see no immediate need to inform him. Their behavior was just vaguely similar to how two operatives on a infiltration mission might behave, neither getting under the other's feet and both affecting not to know one another.

Everyone else was much too preoccupied with Robyn to be concerned with such things, but Leonardo had a vested interest in determining exactly what relationship existed between the 'Hamiltons.' Kinpōge's autonomy here underscored her independence, while simultaneously confirming she'd been heavily sculpted by living in tight knit proximity with her progenitor. That the father had simply _rubbed off_ on the daughter was unlikely; their mute, parallel coordination suggested he'd formally tutored her in everything from knives and explosives to the art of going unseen in a crowd.

No Primordial Aura of Chaos woke up to fan itself at Leonardo today; today was a day for flying silkily under the radar. This man was deliberately and deftly ingratiating himself with April and Raphael. That _itched_ to watch; yet he had the clear motive of facilitating his daughter's acceptance, almost like one might encourage a promising _hobby._ Leonardo was letting it slide disturbingly past.

That didn't mean he _enjoyed_ watching something so malignant slithering around his family members, making himself at home. It didn't mean Leo wasn't watching, and waiting, or that he wouldn't be ready in the event of a _change_. Yet there were allowances Leonardo was prepared to make to keep his apprentice, and one of them was erring on the side of peace, allowing her dark parent in over the threshold to a place where he could perceive himself as trusted and his hosts as ensorceled. As long as the snake held back on the urge to bite, Leonardo would do likewise and reign in on the urge to nip him in the bud.

The last thing he wanted was Kinpōge left friendless and alone, in isolation with and at the mercy of the mindset and tutelage of her unwholesome parent. For that he would feel out this delicate balance between vigilance and silence, and stay his hand until—should it be needed—the last conceivable-

Kinpōge-kun hurried up before Leonardo, holding up a mug of tea. "I laughed," she said, "cause the stuff you asked for comes in a tea bag! Doesn't that remove it's mystical power and stuff?"

"Come now, I am not _that_ orthodoxical," Leo protested. "Full leaf tea may taste less processed, but the bagging process does not magically render it _impuissant._ "

"You need to teach me more English to go with my Japanese!" she chirped, slurping on matching tea. "It tastes like hot tooth paste," she reported.

Leo chuckled.

"Hey everybody!" Casey Jones hollered as he got the door open, carrying a hefty cooler over his shoulder as Shadow pushed along another upon a dolly. "The cheap booze is here!"

* * *

"Are you alright?" asked a wryly concerned older adult.

"I... just..." Mikey tried to articulate, still gazing vacantly out at nothing, left behind, feeling spooked. _She got mad so fast. Why?_

Fingers snapped and Mikey jumped and looked down to the realization that someone whom he actually liked quite a bit was talking to him: Mini's Dad.

"H-Hi!" he brightened a bit, always happy to have anyone's attention.

"You look positively devastated," Mr. Hamilton said, eyes shut to slits as if to study him better. "Might you have been expecting more baby snuggles and fewer emotional meltdowns?"

Mikey's eyes widened and his shoulders drooped. He looked back to try and guess how far Robyn was away from him, and then turned full back to Mr. Hamilton. "I don't get what _happened,_ " he confessed, hoping _somebody_ could explain this all to him.

Mini's Dad nodded like it made perfect sense to him, and reached up about his shoulder to pat his shell and pull him a bit away from the kitchen (and probably away from Robyn, yikes, had she overheard him? He could be quiet!) Mr. Hamilton glanced that way too, like he was just being extra careful and nothing was wrong, and kept his voice down as he said, "Some mothers experience mental sick periods after a baby is born. The normal window of onset is something like, oh, three months or so."

"That just happens?" Mikey disbelieved.

Mr. Hamilton nodded. "It can range from depression, to physical illness, to very wild and dangerous mood swings. Look, it's not really my place to suggest anything, and I'm going to get strange reactions if I do, but—between you and me—that was textbook BPD back there. She needs an anti-psychotic; it'll level her out and leave her feeling like her head is stuffed with cotton, but the sheer amount of fucks she will not give for the next month or two while her hormones level out are going to be very relaxing compared to what she's currently experiencing."

Whoa. Mikey wasn't entirely _surprised_ Mr. Hamilton knew something about this, but it instantly hooked his attention. "I-I know she's on some kind of anti-depressant. Something safe for babies."

The man clicked his tongue, green eyes gleaming knowingly. Mr. Hamilton had weirdly sharp eyes even when he looked bored or tired. "Thought so. She probably needs to get off of them, many types can worsen mood swings. You can't give anti-depressants to anyone with mixed cycles like that, it makes the aggressive episodes sort of hilarious. Similar-sounding illnesses to laypeople; radically different chemical causes and treatments."

Something told Mikey to _pay close attention,_ and that Mr. Hamilton knew more about this Donnie, Mr. O'Neil, and maybe even world-class professionals. But how to talk to Donnie about it without rousing suspicions Mr. Hamilton was weird? Mikey tried to think of how he could pass this 'advice' along to his more medically capable family members. He reached into his pocket to grab hsi phone. "Give me something to Google," he suggested.

"Ah. I think it's something like 'postpartum psychosis,'" Mr. Hamilton leaned closer to help him spell. "There. Look, an article on how postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis differ."

Mikey swiped and scanned rapidly. "'Thoughts of hurting herself— _or her child_?'" he read aloud, looking in alarm to Mr. Hamilton.

Mini's Dad gave a scarily solemn nod and said, "This is the time period in which women have successfully pleaded the insanity case to infanticide. That _doesn't_ mean that's what'll happen here. It just means it would be smart if someone were tuned in to watching her ups as well as her downs. If she seems on cloud nine one second, it could prelude a crash."

"Is..." Mikey hesitated. "What can I do?"

"Are you feeling particularly convincing? She probably needs a break from the baby at night so she can get some sleep in, _if_ she isn't presently wrestling with insomnia to boot. Do you think you can get her to entrust it—him/her—to you for a few hours in the evenings without flipping any paranoid 'you're just doing this because you think I'm a bad mom' detectors?"

"I'm very convincing," Mikey agreed, looking back at the phone. "I'll show Donnie. Hey. Th-thanks."

Mr. Hamilton smiled a little more genuinely than Mikey expected, and patted his shell. "No problem, Sunshine, you looked _broken_ and that was no good at all." Awww. Mikey maybe blushed a little. "By the way, Raphael was asking if you and I could baste the turkey, and Donatello still seems too deep to show off websearches to, so how about we handle turkey maintenance first? Should give you a few minutes to calm down while we're at it."

"Ooh! Yes! I did my super secret broth for it this year!"

"Oh _dear,_ are there marshmallows in it?"

"Noooo. That would be silly. There's maple syrup, pistachio, and avocado!"

"Ava- Do you _want_ to ruin all our waistlines?" He plopped his hands on his hips to scold but then waved a hand and fluttered his eyelashes. "No, no, show me, now I simply must _know_. I've never heard of such a thing and it must be witnessed."

"I invented it, yo!"

* * *

The chaos had settled down, the food was all presently safe and ready for dinner, and now they were just waiting on the last part, the butter rolls, which were in the oven. Beers and other drinks were being cracked open.

Sandro eyed the couch, where Robyn's hair was just visible over the back of the couch. She had settled down and looked much calmer as she presumably breastfed her baby. Leatherhead was sitting with her, and his girls were giving Robyn a respectful berth while trying to peek at the kid.

The baby.

The baby was a boy and Robyn had named him Damon. Sandro wasn't sure if he had (or wanted) any type of emotional connection to him whatsoever. The sight of the little guy, all pudgy and pink and wrapped up in a blanket, had left Sandro in a state of bizarrely agitated confusion, which hadn't gotten properly resolved before Robyn had gone ballistic nearly bitten off three different people's heads.

It was like she'd been possessed. One second she was the flawed but affable aunt Sandro knew and loved; the next second she was trying to eat people alive. Now Sandro was almost slightly _scared_ to be attached to the baby, but not necessarily because he feared her reaction. He just... he just hadn't been given any time to digest that this tiny pink thing was _related_ to him.

"So, who is she?" Wildcard whispered.

"My aunt," Sandro whispered back. "She's not usually like this. She's kinda a mess, but she's always been a good person."

"So that's your cousin?"

"Y-yeah. Not the shelled kind." Damon was his cousin. He finally _had_ a cousin, and that cousin was zero years old and green-eyed with flaming red hair, just like mom. Damon looked _more like_ April than Sandro did.

"Well that'll be interesting," Wild said. "Who's the older guy talking to your mom and my dad?"

"The older-? Oh!" Sandro had nearly forgotten, he'd been so shell-shocked. "That's my _grandpa._ "

Wild gaped. "You have a grandpa?" she asked after a minute of open-mouthed silence. "I mean other than the one on the _butsudan?_ "

"Yeah," Sandro nodded, easing a hand over to take hers. Wildcard hurried to accompany him, and the two of them made their way into the kitchen to wait politely for their elders' attention.

Grandpa O'Neil turned and smiled from Sandro, whom he'd already greeted that evening, to Wildcard. "Why I don't believe I've met your friend," he prompted.

"This is my new little sister," Sandro introduced, grinning a little shyly. "I adopted her. Sort of like a free puppy, only more annoying."

"Oh I _see_!"

"Wait does that mean _I_ get a grandpa!?" Wildcard was amazed. "Hi! I'm Loudmouth! Or at least that's how Sandro prefers to refer to me! But you can call me Ana, because that sounds normal!"

If the grin on Grandpa's face was any indication, this was a welcome break from Robyn and family troubles and he was _really_ stoked for Sandro to have company. "I see, I see. And how did you meet?"

"Oh I rescued him," said Wild.

"Hey," Sandro elbowed her.

"Well I did! He's my damsel in distress, you'll have to excuse him, I'm going to be the ninja and he's going to study law and end up a world famous prosecutor, and I'll be the one body-guarding for him, naturally."

"I hate you, Wild," Sandro said. "All of that was fictitious."

"All of it?" she asked with an eyebrow waggle.

"The damsel part was fictitious on technicality," Sandro informed with eyes half-lidded: "I am not a girl."

"Doh!" She snapped her fingers. "He's got me there. Damn. I mean darn! I mean shell. Something. Words, yes, _words_."

"Awww," Sandro grinned up at Grandpa O'Neil, who—along with Mom and Mr. Hamilton—looked on the verge of laughing. "Look, I think she's _shy._ This almost never happens! Soak in it, Grandpa, soak in her shyness, you may never see it again...!"

* * *

Things you casually pick up while living for unusually short stints in an asylum for the criminally insane...


	13. Thanksgiving - Part 3

[Author's Notes] I will at time insert updates to this story which are not in order. If you Follow my story, you will get updates displaying the name of the new chapter, which may be helpful! Also! I apologize for botching the "World of Reptiles" update. That chapter has been fixed, so you can tab back to read it now :)

* * *

One of Donatello's gauntlets beeped, and he paused in setting the table to consult it. Sandro and Wildcard both perked up in curiousity. They saw him quickly set down the remaining silverware in a pile. His first intention might have been to grab Michelangelo, so he simply broadcasted, "I need a portal security detail!" when sibling choice #1 turned up busy with a baby.

"Can I be on that?!" Wild demanded. Portal! What portal?

"Do we have more guests coming?" Sandro realized.

'Oh boy,' said Donatello's expression, but, well, Wild had been meaning to ask about the giant cloth-covered structures in the northeastern corner of the lab sooner or later! He took a steadying breath and then nodded, waving both teenagers to accompany him, and that got him Leo tagging along as the _actual_ security detail he'd been asking for.

The four of them headed into the lab, where Donatello did indeed go up to that northeastern corner and throw a canvas spread off from over top of a computer console at it's side. He tapped in commands, went through with what appeared to be a quick iris scan, and then motors activated overhead, pulling up the rest of the cloth coverings with cranking of chains. Wild wasn't sure what to make of the shape it revealed. It didn't look like what you'd think of when you heard the word 'portal,' which was—traditionally speaking—some kind of oval-shaped door. It looked like a big ball of layered metal, like some kind of vice or pressure chamber.

"Dimensions are a _thing_ ," Wild realized, grasping at her head and doing an imitation of her brain exploding with the word 'pssheewww!' She was very Michelangelo in that moment, because he did the same thing all the time.

"First thing's first," Donatello said, "the portal and everything around it are _completely_ off limits to you, Wildcard. I've been proofing it against tampering for a decade, but I will still throw you out of my house if I ever catch you near it."

"Heed him," Leonardo instructed.

Wildcard looked surprised from turtle to turtle, and then to Sandro, who nodded that she ought to take this threat seriously. "Oh. Gulp. Okay," she agreed, bunching her hands behind her back. "Ixnay on the portal touching."

"Most of this," Sandro gestured to indicate the spherical shape, "is actually a super advanced containment field. For when things go horribly wrong, or if someone is trying to _hijack the portal_."

"People can _do_ that!?" Wild demanded.

"Turns out you can't just build a portal all la-di-da and assume it'll never bite you in the tail or anything," Donatello sighed, hands on his hips. "So now I have it running on it's own internalized fusion reactor, and it's booby-trapped out the wazoo. It's password protected, it's retina protected, it's fingerprint protected, it has manual levers because no amount of hacking can ever override that regardless of whether inter-dimensional you uses all the same password schema and shares your biology and someone killed him and stole his notes, fingers, and eyeballs.

"This thing's filled with sensors and calibrators, I have sixty-three separate cleansing devices installed from a gentle anti-bacterial mist and sealant to _burn it all with fire and eject it into a black hole._ It's successfully resisted someone's attempt to shove a small neutron star through the portal lens. I won't tell you it's specifications, because, as far as I'm concerned, the means of overriding it's safety features should probably go with me to my near the top, there?" he pointed to show her. "That's the actual top of the portal arch."

"I'm starting to get the vibe that portal ownership is a massive responsibility and commitment," Wildcard decided, mildly intimidated by how many ways someone like her (or Mikey) could boom this.

"Oh you don't know the half of it," Donatello muttered. "It's not a toy. Trust me, I know: I built it, and I was giddy about it, and I _played with it,_ so it may initially feel like I'm being hypocritical, I understand. But after watching random people repeatedly get sucked through it to who the hell even knew where—myself included!—and being on the receiving end of a hostile army of cloned assassins, I had to step my game up." He turned to her. "Wild, I'm telling you, plain and simple, _this thing_ is the most dangerous device in the entire lab. It's nearly gotten us killed twice as often as it's saved the world. And the reason it's still standing today is because of the important roll it plays in warning us about nuclear warheads and zombies."

Wildcard looked from Donnie to the portal and back again. "I feel honored to be seeing it."

"Yes, well," he muttered dryly, "after your reaction to the girls showing up over Halloween, I also feel morally obligated to point out that in the event you ever end up sucked back in time—I can only imagine how, but stranger things have happened—that you should try not to change any more major events. The less damage you do, the less likely it is Temporal Authorities will show up to incarcerate you."

"Naturally there are time police men," Wildcard decided, folding her hands behind her back. "It makes perfect sense that if people can mess with time, you need to have time police men."

"They're a little like time _wizards_ ," Sandro clarified, pulling her hands free and holding one. "Thematically, at least."

"If you ever have to break me out of Time Azkaban," she told her companion, "I guarantee you it will be because you died and I was inconsolable and went back in time to save you."

"That's sweet of you," Sandro decided. "But seriously, don't get any ideas."

"Oh, I don't think I will. Clearly there are lots of _rules_ to doing this correctly without obliterating yourself and/or your home dimension. I don't like to be seen doing anything I don't know I'll be wicked awesome at. Mikey said something about time travel, and Donnie said something about nuclear warheads, but then there was apparently also evil clone armies...? What's the portal actually do?"

"It's multipurpose," Donatello specified. "Non continuous temporal movement and cross dimensional movement operate on the same basic displacement principles. So we get time travelers, we get the occasional freaky experience of having to work with versions of ourselves from other dimensions, we get jellyfish people who have been the victims of inter-dimensional piracy... sometimes we even get Jehovah Witnesses."

"There are a lot of different _kinds_ of dimensions," Sandro tried to explain, even though Wild was presently more concerned about those Jehovah Witnesses. "Different types of dimensions require different portal algorithms to access. And there's different natural connections between dimensions which makes them easier or harder to access. You can almost think of dimensions sitting on a map relative to each other."

"So, go North," Wild supposed, "and you find all the dimensions that don't have the same laws of physics as your own, where walking into one will just cause you to vaporize? But go south and you find everything vaguely familiar, with weirdo desert jungle and volcano planets, where everyone kinda looks human, or maybe like monkeys, and speaks a language you've never heard and it's more or less like you're in a sci-fi thriller? And go East and you find the _alternate universes,_ who have all the same characters and same basic timeline as your own universe?"

"Exactly," Donatello agreed, with a smirk her way, easing up now that it did seem Wildcard wasn't possessed by any irrepressible urges to screw up the multiverse. "Remind me, and I will actually give you a thorough primer on dimensional theory later, okay?"

Wildcard was pretty much in awe, but the full implications of all of this still hadn't hit her and probably wouldn't for awhile. "I'd really appreciate that. What's coming through the portal today?"

"A friend," Donatello explained. "No interdimensional and/or temporal authorities involved; this is one of those 'directions' of dimensions that it's safe to connect with." He tapped a button on the console. "You're clear to arrive, Professor!"

Sandro got excited. He clearly knew whoever their guest was, and was eager to see them.

Wildcard wasn't much surprised to see Leonardo actually draw and hold at ready both his katana. She doubted their expected visitor was a danger to them; after Donatello's explanation of how dangerous portals could be, she could see why a security detail was necessary for opening one!

A great, deep, bone-permeating whirring began to emanate from deep inside the sphere, and Wild wondered if this was the portal itself or merely the sound of raised defenses. She heard a shimmery sound, like a person walking through a waterfall of very tiny metallic chimes, and then the whirring began to die down. Puffs of air likely supplied that anti-bacteria cleansing factor, and a big iris opened up in the side of the sphere, making a doorway inward. Wildcard and Sandro waited...!

A robot stepped through!

A genuine, upright, android!

Well at least they wouldn't need any more turkey than they already had, right?

"Professor Honeycutt!" Sandro waved, obviously recognizing this person. "You made it for _Thanksgiving?_ "

"Sandro?" a frazzled and very absent-minded-professor-like-voice came out from the android, and Wildcard blinked rapidly as this brought to mind an eccentric well-meaning scientist with wild white hair all over the place. "I think I must have lost track of the 'Thanksgivings,' you are _significantly_ taller than I remember...!"

"You've missed about three," Sandro agreed with a grin. "I remember _you_ though!"

"Wait wait wait," Wild interrupted everyone. "Hold up just a sec, Mr. Professor Sir, can you please say 'We need to go back to the future?'"

Sandro blinked, and looked down at her and raised a brow, obviously not getting the reference. Professor Honeycutt probably would have blinked, if he'd had normal eyes. Hell, even _Leo_ blinked, and he was supposed to like Sci-Fi, and _Back to the Future_ was like five years after the first Star Wars movie.

Wildcard slapped a hand over her face. "God, everyone here is too _young_ ," she complained.

Donatello rounded the portal. "I have a DeLorean in storage in Texas I'm trying to get shipped up here," he confessed wryly to Wildcard as he passed, with a reassuring pat on her head, "to mount overhead as an ornamental feature."

"I love you, Donnie-Senpai," she sniffed, placing a hand over her heart. "Really and truly."

Sandro hit her upside the back of the head and then tugged her forward to greet Professor Honeycutt with Donnie and Leo.

* * *

[Author's Notes]

Sucked into a portal!? I'm not sure about you, but I think I saw something referenced which reminded me of SAINW. Maybe it's my imagination! Though it would definitely explain why someone takes his portal so seriously...!


	14. Thanksgiving - Part 4

Joker leaned back on his heels and reigned in on the urge to applaud.

Michelangelo was a _pro._ He'd approached Robyn with the flawlessly adorable body language of a shy toddler: all bow-legged and scuffing the floor bashfully with one toe. Guileless and hopeful, he asked if he could pretty please hold the baby for a bit, and then he hastily promised not to drop the boy, and oh, oh, oh please oh please oh please could he feed him a bottle, pleaassee?!

Robyn O'Neil got to hand over her son like she was bestowing a magical gift upon someone, educating him in all the wise ways of motherhood, and not like her parenting skills or homicidal inclinations were being put to the microscope.

Sometimes, subtle was the name of the game. Other times, laying it on thick just looked _amazing._ Particularly when one didn't have to lie and barely had to stretch the truth to make it work. Michelangelo's natural enthusiasm gave him an attack vector on buttering up nearly anyone. And while the rest of the family looked stressed and concerned for the baby now that the full implications of Robyn's abnormal emotional state were weighing in on them, Michelangelo looked like he now wanted to be Robyn's best friend for the rest of forever.

Mikey no longer looked shell-shocked, dragged out thin, or lost for words, and none of the charged and/or defensive she said to him put a damper on his spirits. All he'd needed was someone to calmly explain what was eating her, and empathy had burst to life like a bonfire. She couldn't hurt him at all, now, and that made _her_ feel safe with her baby in his arms, like she'd been tossed a buoy she expected she'd be able to find her way back to if everything went belly up again for her mentally.

Plus that expression of utter adoration and delight on his face the instant he had the baby in his arms was obviously genuine. Mikey, _clearly,_ liked small adorable things in a way Joker had definitely never had (Citation: His own child had taken a few years to grow on him). Sunshine spent the next fifteen minutes bouncing in place like the world's best and most professional baby-rocker, looking at absolutely nothing but that baby, love-struck with miniaturized life totally regardless of its amazing capacity for producing poop. And when it _did_ poop, he asked Robyn to teach him how to clean the diaper despite _very obviously_ already knowing how (No one got the tape right the first time. _No one._ )

Joker tapped his fingers upon the crock pot lid as the turkey finished cooking.

He firmly quashed the urge to phone up the nearest pet store and place a rush order for about five hundred kittens, bunnies, and freshly hatched chicks. (But seriously, could one imagine? Teheheheheheee! He'd probably roll about in them! Kittens and yellow poofs, everywhere! Buahaha!)

The sudden appearance of a robot and Wildcard darting up snagged Joker's attention. "I met a dimensional portal today," his daughter said quietly. "And I think I need to not talk about it even with you because it's so special."

"Oh _dear._ I'll make a note not to ask. Who's our visitor?"

"Professor Zayton Honeycutt," Wild informed. "He's like a super long-time friend of theirs and helped with the whole evil interdimensional alien warlords stuff. Which is real, by the way, and not at all like Santa Claus."

"Of course it's _real._ Goodness, you have a skeptical mind. I'm very proud of that, by the way, suits reality," He hugged her close with an arm, and then patted her. "Well, I guess I'll go introduce myself."

"Roger! Where's Sunshine, by the way?"

"Helping with the baby," Joker pointed.

" _Oh_." Her enthusiasm plummeted.

Joker blinked, wondering if she was angry with Robyn. "Squirt?" he asked.

"Oh I don't know anything about babies," Wild said, eyeing Michelangelo like he was holding a giant alien sea slug instead of a baby. Only with less enthusiasm. She might have liked a giant sea slug. She did not have any instinct to go up and make goo-goo faces at that baby whatsoever.

Joker cleared his throat. "Well don't make any any time soon and you'll be in the clear."

"What? Eewww! _Dad!_ "

Parenting success!

* * *

Dinner - Was - Delicious.

Completely delicious. The first bites of mouth-watering and sinfully delicious turkey and ham had everyone in a better mood, and the beer bottles and cups of wine scattered around at every seat weren't doing any harm either. Seating everyone required that the family pull out some extra tables. Leatherhead sat with his girls so that he could mind them and fold their napkins and help with any dropper silverware. Robyn needed an extra chair so she could put the baby down in a carrier and mind the baby while she ate. Everyone chatted with everyone, in a variety of different conversations up and down the table.

April poured Sandro half a cup of wine, which was more than a taster. He perked up curiously at the red liquid and thanked her. Wildcard, who wanted to do more or less everything Sandro got to do, looked to her Dad to see if she could have some wine with dinner, too. Mr. Hamilton and Mrs. O'Neil shared a look over the table, and Mr. Hamilton smiled, and Wildcard got a respectable inch of red to try. They were lucky Shadow was distracted talking to the gator girls and Grandpa O'Neil, or Mr. Jones probably would have stuffed a beer into her hands and yelled 'have at it!' That would have gotten funny!

"It's _sour_ ," Sandro realized after his first taste, and his mother chuckled.

"Do you like it?" April asked him.

"I don't _know_."

"It's fermented grapes, of course it's sour," Wildcard admonished, sniffing at the wine before taking a mouthful onto her palette. "This is more of a steak wine, though" she decided.

Sandro turned in his seat to stare at her.

"What?" Wild asked her bro rhetorically with an arch of her brow. "My dad cooks and tends a bar, you don't think he's let me have a thimbleful of wine before? Where do you think I hang out when I'm not with you?"

April looked to her and then to Raphael, who shrugged and said smugly, "Toldja shoulda gotten the Beaujolais Grand Cru," as if agreeing with Wild! She giggled evilly and Sandro threw a napkin at her that covered her face.

"Omigod I'm more cultured than you on _one thing_ ," she realized, still napkined.

Sandro harrumphed, though whether it was because she'd gotten to do 'adult stuff' before he had or whether it had anything to do with culture, who could say?!

She reached out for _Sandro's_ cup, since he didn't seem to want the rest of it, but her dad shot her a look over the table, and she immediately withdrew. No more than a taste, then. Dad was very much against drug abuse, and underaged tipsiness would totally count.

"The cranberry jam is delisshhh," Shadow called across the table.

"I know it is," Donatello agreed smugly, because obviously he'd made it.

"I'm going to eat myself into a food coma," Wild told Sandro. "You'll save me from passing out into my turkey gravy, right?"

"No, I'll take pictures of it and harass you with them for an entire year," Sandro promised.

"BFFs forever," Wild agreed this was the right thing to do, and the two of them butted elbows and clasped forearms in a secret handshake variant.

"Turkey's great," Raphael complemented, and Mikey and Donatello shared a hi-five over the table. Apparently Raphael's approval of the largest source of protein in the room was a badge of approval. "Ham's a little dry though."

Donatello did a 'doh, curses,' gesture, and Mikey giggled and waved a spoon at Donnie with a 'told you soooo.'

"Thanks to _all_ the chefs," Grandpa O'Neil praised copiously, remarking on each and every dish and wow the work it took, and April wiped her mouth of mashed potatoes to second his sentiment and thank all her boys.

" _What_ are you _drinking_?" Wildcard suddenly demanded as she propped herself up on the table to get a look out of the little bowl her Sensei was using like a cup.

Leo nearly coughed, because now several people were staring at him and grinning. "Sake," he said, and held out the bowl so she could inspect it. She gave a sniff. "Rice wine."

"You _drink_?" she demanded of the most uptight person she knew, scandalized at this relevation.

Somewhere in the background, Raphael and Casey were elbowing eachother and snickering over their beers, and April was trying not to choke laughing.

"A single cup of sake..." Sensei protested, martyred to their amusement, "is not enough to dull the senses."

"Na, it's definitely not," Raphael agreed, leaning over to pick up a bottle of something and to pour more off-white liquid into Leo's bowl. "Have some more, Fearless!"

Leo looked at his bowl like it had been violated by failing to contain exactly the traditionally sized portion of alcohol which he desired to consume. Now he was no longer interested in even sipping on it, much less finishing it.

"Is it _warm_?" Wildcard was horrified.

"It is traditionally consumed warm," Leo confirmed.

Wildcard dumped the rest of her wine into Sandro's cup without even looking, and held out the glass to solicit a taster of whatever this horrible substance was that her mentor was drinking.

Her sensei, she failed to notice, did not meet her father's gaze like April had, to ensure they were on the same page or to solicit approval. Leo looked only within, and at her, and at Raphael, and then, with great dignity, he reached over to gently pour a little sake from his cup to hers. A few people _did_ pick up this was strange. Mikey, for one, glanced from her to Leo, and then back at her Dad. Mr. Hamilton only discretely lowered his eyes and said nothing, half-smiling, half-politely listening, all not drawing attention to the situation.

Wildcard sank back into her chair (which was much too large for a human butt, so she always knelt while eating at this silly table), and sniffed and sniffed at the sake and finally took a sip. "It's _aawwfful_ ," she exclaimed, and then took another sip. "Eeewwww."

"Well stop drinking it then!" Sandro elbowed her.

"I can't, it's like a car wreck, I need to see the whole thing," she lamented to the laughter of several adults and Sensei's mute and amused head-tilt. "I think I'm growing desensitized. It's getting less gag-reflex-inducing...!"

"You may be laying it on thick, child," Sensei remarked over a sip of his own. "Though, like any other alcohol, it is an acquired taste."

"Acquisition of taste is being attempted, haven't you heard!?" Wild chastised back. "Wow this is weird."

"You neeeeeddd to teach me how to make these," Mikey moaned approvingly down the table as he scooped up yet another portion of candied yams. "These are amazeballs."

Her dad wasn't buying it. "Hmm, Truly? Because I honestly think you would eat anything with marshmallows melted on it," Mr. Hamilton accused.

"Nnnoooo," Mikey insisted, leaning over the man in question to grin right in his face, for they were seated beside one another. "These are _so good_."

Mr. Hamilton narrowed eyes at him, like he found this invasion of personal space amusing but was about to make Mikey regret it nevertheless. "Tell me, Sunshine, did _you_ sneak alcohol while no one was looking?"

Mikey jumped, realizing it had been smelled upon his breath. "Crap!" Several turtles looked up in alarm. "It was only a sip!" he protested, raising both hands to defend himself. "Honest!"

"Mental note," Mr. Hamilton penned on the air, "single sip of wine makes Michelangelo tipsy."

"No! No it didn't I'm fine!" Mikey bristled. "You gave Sandro wine, I weigh more than twice what Sandro does! Look at Mini, she just drank sake! I'm _fine!_ "

Donatello shot Mikey a look and went back to eating. "Single sip of wine gives Michelangelo a placebo effect, that's for sure."

"That's very common," Mr. Hamilton agreed with a dismissive wave of a hand. "Sometimes I serve woogirls pure mixer if I know they're bar-hopping and wont notice. Saves a bundle on vodka, and I don't have to decide whether to cut them off yet."

"Is that legal?" Wildcard asked, still making faces at her cup.

"If I put it on the menu with non-alcoholic ingredients," Mr. Hamilton replied. "You think they read? Just name it something cute like a 'Pink Bikini,' add grapefruit and a dollop of ginger, and price it with a fifty percent markup. _Easy._ "

"Oh great," Mikey sighed sadly at his plate, "I'm a woogirl," and at that Mr. Hamilton cracked up laughing and clapped.

"I'll-I'll give you the recipe for the yams," Mr. Hamilton promised when he was done laughing at Mikey's expense, and he picked up his own wine and gave a well-meaning wink as he drank from it. Mikey stuck out his tongue, and went back to shoveling yams.

"This turkey _is_ good," Honeycutt abruptly interrupted them from where he'd been joining in the discussion beside April and Donatello, but naturally hadn't been eating. "I took a sample and compared it against a dictionary of flavor samples. It's in the upper second percentile."

Mikey squealed and gave a victorious whoop. "Woo! Go me! I mean us!"

Donatello had heard the slip, and looked up vindictively. "I'm the one who _basted_ it the whole afternoon! You never _finish_ anything!" A napkin was thrown; Mikey ducked for cover. Giant mutant ninja turtles nearly got into a rowdy fight over their turkey. Mr. Hamilton started laughing again.

"Guys, the sake isn't horrible anymore!" Wild reported excitedly of her cup. "I've lost my taste buds to it, we're all good!"


	15. Thanksgiving - Part 5

Sandro edged closer.

"Auntie?" he hoped.

Robyn turned a surprised look up to him and then smiled. She lifted both arms. "Hey Sandro!"

Sandro decided he was absolutely going to supply that hug, and hurried forward to squeeze her. "Hey Auntie," he greeted, and was tight and authentic about his hug. "How was the hospital?"

"Oh, with the baby?" she asked, pulling back to smooth hair out of her face. "Turns out I had a bad reaction pain medication they give you. The epidural?"

"Ooh," Sandro winced.

"Yeah they had to pull me off of it because mine and the baby's heart rates both plummeted. It was all Au Naturale after that."

"Was someone with you at least?"

"Yeah, there was a really sweet nurse and then Dad—Grandpa—he managed to get off. Thank God, because it took nearly three days, and I was shot to peices at the end."

"That sounds terrible," Sandro agreed, wondering if Robyn had been going berserk those three days, or if she'd been okay. Even though he'd overheard his parents and grandfather talking quietly with one another, he still didn't understand what was going on with his aunt. Maybe he ought to flag down Mom later on, when Robyn was asleep, to let her know he was feeling a little freaked out and needed, like, some kind of orientation so he wasn't scared of his own relatives. "The TV tells me it's super painful. Giving birth?"

"It's... it's definitely up there," Robyn agreed, smiling like she could laugh about it now that it was over. Robyn had a long history with pain management. "It triggered a lot of old muscle cramps. Afterwards the doctors tried to give me pain medication to help me calm down, but get this: It was an _opiate_."

"You're kidding me." Sandro was _sure_ anyone who had Robyn's chart ought to have known better than that!

"Nope! At the last second I recognized the tail end of the scientific name," Robyn said proudly. "It was okay, Dad brought me special brownies, I lived to tell the tale! We filed one _hell_ of a complain with the hospital, though. With how crazy opiate addictions are in this country right now? Half the east coast is drowning in heroine, and I have this super long history with pain medication and escalating dosages, all of it available to them, they have all my old records!"

"Did they put anything like that in you with the epidural?"

"No, thank Jesus, even though its common to put opiates in the epidural! Whoever was in charge of that, did it right. But whoever was next must have glanced at my history wrong, and saw 'use these' instead of 'no way in hell should you use these.' Someone later said I could _sue_ for that, but it just didn't seem right. Taking money out of the hospital like that, for something that didn't actually go wrong? That's a research hospital, I don't want to eat up their budget for Joe Schmoe's dyslexic mix-up or whatever."

Robyn was still Robyn. Maybe stressed out of her mind, and way too alone, and having some troubles, but she was still the Aunt and human being who Sandro had grown up loving from afar. The same person who'd put her life on the line for her mutant family members loads of time. "It's the same hospital Grandpa works at, right?"

"Yeah. I don't even want anybody fired, I just want somebody slapped and to have 'wake up!' yelled in their face. Relapses are serious business, they can ruin lives. Said a little prayer to Saint Margaret and the Virgin Mary I got spared that, on top of everything else." She breathed out thoughtfully. "Have I ever told you much about the medication I'm usually on?"

"We talked about it last year," Sandro confirmed, to her 'oh thats right,' "because _at first_ I was confused about whether that meant you smoked pot or what the whole legitimacy of that was, but then I went internet surfing to figure out what I could and I wanted you to tell me some more."

"Right, right, right. Well you remember I usually just take the time release capsule, right? Yeah. It's not remotely recreational, I don't get 'high,' I don't intake any THC, I'm not at higher risk for lung disease, I don't self-dose, I'm on a very strict medicinal regiment for a very well-established problem. There's lots of crazy things about my life, and my relationship with cannibanoids isn't one of them. There are eighty-eight different kinds of cannibanoids, did you know that?"

"Are you not on anything right now?"

"Well. Not right now. Research right now says there's probably no negative effect on fetal development or lactation, but I kinda wanted to play it super safe for little Damon, so I went off my pills most of the pregnancy. Which... which is why I ended up in such a bind after the problem with the epidural. I caved and ate my special brownies, that was rough. I needed to take a moment. I was beat. Dad understood, that was super sweet of him, and he even carried me a brand new research paper on the subject, and seriously told me 'now eat your brownies' and honestly what woman is going to argue with brownies?"

"Ha! That sounds like something Donnie would do. I think that's cool, that you really research it all like that."

"That's cause we're all clever people in this family," Robyn agreed, tapping Sandro fondly on the snout. "We don't just sit back and let people make all the judgement calls for us! Just you watch, you'll be the same. It's _inherited._ It's called being proactive!Anyway I'm not on anything right now by an antidepressant right now, because I'm a worry wort and I'm still breastfeeding."

"Any pain?"

"Yeah, a little bit," she confessed. "But the first milk a mom has to give her baby, it's called colostrum, and it's super important for their health, and I'm not _quite_ out of the transitional phase for that yet, and I want to get through that before maybe switching him off to powdered formula. I can hold out for a few more days; I've made it this far! Oh, hey... would you like to...? Would you like to maybe hold the baby?"

Sandro looked hesitantly down at where the tiny life in question, little Damon O'Neil, was as small as a loaf of bread beside her leg. "O-okay," he said nervously. "Okay, yeah."

Robyn beamed at him, and scooped up the baby, and turned and slowly offered him out.

Sandro stiffened as he lifted his hands. "What do I do?" he asked. "How do I not drop him?"

"It's actually not as hard as it looks," she said. "You want to keep one hand under the head, and just sort of wrap the whole other arm around him so he's sort of in the elbow."

"I... um..." The baby got eased into his arms, "okay..."

And then Robyn was pulling back, and Sandro found himself holding his cousin for the very first time ever. Damon looked sleepily up at him, and waggled one elbow, and then almost immediately went back to sleep with his face turned into Sandro's plastron like Sandro were the comfiest plush pillow in the world and _not_ an armor-plated turtle. Damon had a complete head of flame orange hair. He was slightly comical, and completely fragile-looking, and so _soft_.

"Oh _wow_ ," Sandro gushed, staring wonderouslyat tiny fingernails that were only as big across as the head of a pin. "He-hey Damon. It's Damon, right? I don't... I don't think I really knew what a baby looked like, even after seeing tons on TV."

Robyn laughed. "I guess you didn't have a chance to hold many, huh? I got to try out a few when friends at work had kids!"

"Maybe Shadow once, but I don't remember." Sandro looked up at his aunt, and then grinned big. "He's like... red as carrots...!" he whispered conspiratorially

She kept laughing. "I know! He came out all red and swollen and looking like he was on fire!"

"He's so cute...! Hi Damon!"

* * *

"Ape," Raphael whispered sharply, waving her hurriedly over and then discretely pointing with his chin at what he wanted her to see.

April looked across the house to see Sandro standing with the baby in his arms, looking almost as delighted as Mikey had been.

 _Awwwwww...!_ April nearly melted.

Both parents stood there, admiring their beautiful boy and the big smile on his face as he cradled his itty bitty cousin. He was going to _love_ being an older brother. Even if the age gap would obviously be very big, he'd still get to enjoy watching them grow up, and being and important part of their lives. First thing was first, though, they had to make absolutely sure they'd be able to keep their promises about coming home and putting their relationship with _him_ back to rights.

Sandro looked up at them, saw them standing there, and smiled. 'Oh boy this is a BABY,' his face said. 'Look, mom, dad! A baby!'

Raphael coughed a chuckle, and grinned down at April.

* * *

Wildcard was not at all thrilled to see where Sandro was. She'd turned her back for ten seconds, and now he was over there with... _the baby_. That meant Michelangelo was unoccupied and she could pounce him with demands to tell her stories about inter dimensional adventures and turtles through time and _what exactly_ was true about those zany comics and what was fiction!?

But with another few glances at Sandro, she was almost feeling jealous, like she didn't want him to be over there doing whatever it was he was doing with the baby (being interested in it?) without her being able to do the same exact thing (or maybe she didn't like the baby stealing attention?). Maybe she wasn't jealous so much as she was weirded out that something was going on over there that she didn't feel she was allowed to be a part of. Cause, usually, Sandro and her did things together.

Pouting, Wildcard watched him with the baby.

Then, marshaling up her wary courage, she hesssitttantly crept up towards him. It wasn't like she had to know what to know anything about babies to simply occupy the space to Sandro's left, right? Um.

Sandro wasn't the one who noticed Wildcard first. Robyn laid eyes on her, and Wildcard hurriedly skittered up to Sandro's side to indicate her affiliations.

"Hi!" the previously exploding but now deceptively plesant woman greeted. "I don't think we've met."

Wild still wasn't sure what she thought about this. Sensei hadn't _talked_ to her about Robyn. Nobody had. "I'm Ana," Wild said. "Short for Anastasia."

"Oh!" Sandro had finally noticed her. "Auntie, this is my best friend—er, 'Anastasia.' She's got a lot of nicknames though. Ana," Sandro wasn't sure why she was uncomfortable, but he was using the name she'd provided for herself, "this is my Aunt Robyn, mom's sister."

"Nice to meet you," Robyn greeted, and Wildcard gave a shy evasive smile.

 _I don't really want to have met you,_ Wild did not say.

"And thiiiissss is the new baby, my cousin," Sandro said, turning to Wildcard eagerly, and AH WHAT WAS HE DOING!?

Wildcard went stiff as a board, because Sandro—for some reason—was handing her a baby. "San," she breathed, trying to communicate monosyllabicly that this was A TERRIBLE IDEA.

"Okay, just hold his head like this," Sandro was instruction, and for all that he'd made it look as effortless as a flower, Wildcard felt like an awkward wiggly jelly bag puppet had been handed to her and it was going to roll off or inward or in some strange direction and fall through her arms like soap. "There, you've got it!"

Nope. No, Wild _did not_ have it. She stared up at her brother in lock-jawed silence, and then looked horrified to the mother—who did not seem to feel it odd that her baby was being passed around to random strangers who may or may not have killed three people to even end up knowing this family. _What is WRONG with you!?_ _Don't you have any idea how unsafe this is!? Have you no sense!? I could be a mass murdering psychopath, how would you know!?_ Never mind that people also passed babies around in movies, obviously this could not be normal, obviously, not when alarms were blaring inside her head ERROR, ERROR, THIS IS A BABY.

"What do you think?" Sandro asked, bemused by her facial expressions, and clearly not tuned to the same wavelength today.

Wildcard gaped at him and then looked horrified down at the thing he'd bequeathed onto her. "It's very nice now take it back please," she whispered stiffly.

"What? Wild. It's okay, you're not going to drop it-"

"Yes I am."

"Wild. I've never seen you drop anything. You have the fastest reflexes I've ever seen on a person our age."

"No you do not understand, I am not responsible enough to be doing this, this, whatever this is, this baby sharing ritual, something is going to happen, take it back before it explodes, or evaporates, or turns inside out, or falls, or-"

"Wild, I think you are exaggerating, I didn't get a certificate prior to being handed him-"

"In the name of all of your ancestors, _help,_ someone _please help me...!_ " Wild whimpered, voice cracking, staring to tear up in sheer terror and abandonment. " _I can't do this...!_ "

Someone was laughing at her, loud and booming, and then suddenly Sandro's dad had pounced the situation from behind, and was hoisting up the baby in one massive arm. "Whaddaya know," he laughed. "Da Mouse has somethin' in common with Fearless aftah all!"

Wildcard hyperventilated in the aftermath of what had surely nearly been a near disaster either equal to or in excess of the severity of a nuclear scare.

Sandro looked oddly from her to his dad, and then back down at her. He got an arm behind her and rubbed her back. "Whoa, hey," Sandro murmured. "What's up, what's wrong?"

"You handed me a baby," Wildcard rasped.

"Uh. Really?" Sandro asked, steering her away from Raphael and Robyn. Robyn didn't sound too thrilled to have Raphael holding the baby, but accepted Damon back in a stiff and dignified manner. She didn't shoot any evil looks Wild's way, and didn't seem offended Wild had _flipped out_ when presented with her offspring. Sandro craned over to look at her face. "You weren't just being a goof?"

"It was _horrifying,_ " Wildcard wheezed.

"Wow. Do they have a name for that phobia?" Sandro wondered, bringing her back over to the kitchen table.

"Brephophobia is a fear of infants, in specific," Professor Honeycutt suggested helpfully from across the room. "Though it may include _dislike_ of children, as opposed to just fear of them, such as a dislike of noisy children."

"I was just scared of breaking one," Wild whispered, staring dazedly at her empty hands.

"Leo does the same exact thing," April remarked over their heads, and both kids looked up in surprise.

"What?" Sandro asked on their behalf.

"Freezes, if you hand him a baby."

"I mean," Donnie butt in, voice wry as he smiled down at Wildcard, "he doesn't actually say 'please help me, it's going to explode,' but that is pretty much what ends up instantly written all over his face. It made him the butt of many jokes Sandro's first few years of life. Thanks for actually putting it _into words._ "

"Ha! Yeah, Fearless ain't got no parental instincts _at all_ , just goes straight as a board till someone 'rescues' him!" Raphael was laughing hard as he came back. "Chill, Mouse, ya ain't like _him_ ," A massive, rough hand ruffled Wildcard's hair and her bandanna tails. "Lot's of people start off nervous around babies, specially when they's ain't had em around much as kids. People get used ta it. Dun worry 'bout it."

Between Donatello, Sandro, April, and Raphael all teasing and reassuring her, Wild was sort of calming down. She peeked bashfully out around shells to see Mikey with the gator girls, helping them color. He give her a big smile and wink, and mouthed something like 'its okay!' Honeycutt (the new person in the room!) seemed a little bewildered. Grandpa O'Neil was smiling; her own dad was snickering. Leatherhead was usually hard to read, having that kinda stereotypical gator grin at all times, but he was usually pretty zen and didn't laugh at people.

Leo had his gaze down and seemed halfway between annoyed and _resigned_ , and said absolutely nothing to defend himself, which one supposed meant reports were true. He did freeze!

An image tickled up into Wild's mind, of Donatello obliviously handing Leo BabySandro as he walked by, asking 'can you feed him this time?' and Leo going ramrod straight in mortification and panic, staring at this tiny life he had just been entrusted with, trapped woodenly in place until Donnie came back and found him there. She grinned a little, and then giggled up at Sandro. Sandro smiled and squeezed her.


	16. Caught It

"Mikey," Donatello leaned in the doorway of the bedroom. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Sure," Mikey bounced off his bed, leaving laptop and headphones behind. "What's up?"

"It's been over a month since the introduction. The parents are considering reintroducing rules governing how long Wildcard stays over."

"She's already only here half of the day," Mikey protested. "Like eight hours sleeping, eight hours here, eight hours not. That's not good enough?"

"I was thinking we might suggest either Saturday or Sunday to be a family only day."

"Sat does make a bit of sense, yo. Mini's a strong personality to come home to every weekend," Mikey admitted with unexpected sympathy, which meant he'd been reading the situation for awhile. Excellent, he'd have the right advice. "Sometimes work's rough, yo, and those are their only rest days. Plus they're usually running on fumes when they get in the door."

Donatello shrugged worriedly. "How do we talk to Sandro? He'll dig his heels in. He'll hate it just because it sounds a certain way."

Mikey had been thinking about it. "People aren't supposed to do literally every second of every day together. You miss out on fun stuff, like have one person good at skateboarding and one person good at building nuclear reactors. And you have no stories to tell each other, that's double no fun!"

"We can't tell him he 'isn't supposed to' xyz."

"What if we treat them like they're both our responsibilities on those days?" Mikey wondered. "So, say the parents want some chill quality time with Sandro. Sandro might be chill with it if, for example, he knew I was hanging with Mini for that duration of time. He wants to be sure she's taken care of. That's not crazy of him."

Donnie chewed the inside of his cheek. "Wildcard might be game," he decided. "She behaved herself while Sandro was visiting his parents' apartment."

"Oh yeah! I was really surprised you let her stay!" Mikey grinned.

Donatello shrugged. "She's proven herself a very respectful guest to the lab, and that's much more than I could have asked for."

"Is that what she did most of the day? Stuck with you, watching your projects, doing her spider robot thing?"

"And listening to podcasts." Donatello straightened. "But for a few hours, she dragged Leo out of meditation and cajoled him into spending time with her."

"No way." Mikey's eyes widened. "How?!"

"I have no idea. I came out to check on her, and found the two of them playing soccer in the dojo. He talked with her till his voice was sore, and she kept asking questions."

Mikey's birthday might as well have come early, he gushed so much excitement out of every pore.

* * *

The second Raphael entered the house that Friday evening, Sandro's scales prickled with instinctive awareness of the charged mood in the air. Lit dynamite had entered the house, big and red and fiery, ready to blow at the slightest provocation. It loomed overhead like a storm cloud, and leveled all Sandro's excitement for the weekend. He stood silently near the door, listening to the older turtle remove his shoes and greet his brothers.

Sometimes, it baffled Sandro that no one else seemed to be able to tell Raphael was in a bad mood. Sandro could feel it in every bone and nerve the second the two of them were sharing the same air as one another. Maybe his uncles were desensitized, had learned how to ignore it, and had accidentally forgotten how to look for it. That made more sense than to think they were callous or neglectful. And more sense than to think Sandro could see something invisible.

Mom greeted Sandro, and he forced an old fashioned fake smile for her. She smiled back, but her general expression and demeanor confirmed that the work week had been rough. She needed to wind down too, albeit much more peaceably, and over conversation and coffee.

A volcano passed behind Sandro and brushed a hand affectionately across his shell. Sandro flinched.

Sobered, he glanced over at where Wildcard was finishing breakfast, and then, as early as he could, wove his way over into the kitchen. He leaned over Wildcard and placed a hand on each of her shoulders so she could tell he was being in earnest, lowering his head beside her ear. "Head home," he instructed.

She twisted to look at him in surprise. "What?"

"I don't want you here right now," he told her.

"Tough luck, Sensei doesn't let me skip Ninjitsu," she retorted with a frown.

"Tell him you want to give my parents a short vacation from you so they can spend time with me," Sandro replied.

She tilted her head, and then—cunningly—her gaze darted over towards Raphael.

"Please just do as I ask," Sandro breathed into her hair. "Don't fight me."

" _One_ freebie," she growled. "And if I don't like how it turns out, or you try to lie to me on debriefing, you'll regret it."

He crushed a fraternal kiss to her temple that Mother didn't see because she was glaring holes through her coffee.

* * *

"Yo! Get ya kama, boy, ya late fah a date in the dojo!" Raphael joked. "Ya forget?"

"I'm just seeing Wild off," Sandro said calmly and without inflection. Michelangelo was helping her pack, looking nervous or something. Donatello perked up, wide-eyed and confused from the table, frowning over April's head.

"Sure, whatevah, hurry up-" Raphael's snout wrinkled, and he shot Sandro an annoyed scowl. "Wait, what da hell? She leavin' early or somethin'?"

"Preexisting engagement," the Mouse agreed. "Have a fun family day without me!"

Raphael looked between both younger uncles, both who were acting weird like they was hiding something, before turning to Leo. "She come early for practice or somethin'?"

"No," Leo answered him like he was nervous, or off-kilter or something. The hell was with everybody? "I do not know what to do."

"Da fuck ya talkin' about?" Raphael straightened, cause Leo weren't one to admit to shit like that. "What's going on?"

Leo looked weirdly trapped.

"Yo!" Raphael shoved him with a low growl. "Ya gonna leave me in da dark? _Again?_ Aftah last time?"

Leo ran his tongue over his beak ridge, and kept his voice at a whisper. "My best guess is that Sandro is steeling himself for Ninjitsu practice, because he believes you are in ill humor. He is sending her away. He does not want her to see you angry. You are _his_ father, and perhaps—in his mind— _his_ to face in the dojo. Alone."

Raphael sneered. Anger built up in his throat and came out in a slew of cuss words, and he shoved Leo back, this time towards the dojo, this time reaching threatening for Sai.

 _Wake up._ "Last thing Ah need from you is-!"

 _Wake up!_ "Ain't we had dis conversation before!? Wit you tryin' ta start somethin about-"

 _WAKE UP, you ANGRY INSANE FUCKTARD! Add shit TOGETHER! Use ya FUCKIN EYES! Leo ain't a LIAR, and you ain't some IDIOT what can't use his BRAIN!_

Leo wasn't fighting him, wasn't standing up to him, was just _reeling_ there like it had given everything out of him to make a _peep,_ much less stomach out full sentences. He looked like he felt guilty, and on thin ice, and like he had no idea where to put his feet, and Leo just never _looked_ like that. And maybe that was it, maybe that _fear_ or panic or misery, or _whatever_ it was, coming from what little any of them had left of Splinter Junior, maybe that was what _did it._

Raphael stared silent and seething through him for a moment, and then rounded on the rest of the house. His gaze flicked to Donnie, who looked put on the spot, like air raid sirens and other warning bells were going off in every corner of his computer brain but he didn't know what to do. Raph looked at Mike who was tip-toeing like he was trying to fly invisible under some radar, saying nothing, and not joking neither. His expression looked spooked. Raphael looked to Sandro, whose face was placid, stony, dry, cold, eyes half-lidded, no emotion there at all.

 _Dis is ya relationship with ya kid. With ya brothers too._

 _Round and round in a circle ya ain't endin', like ya some kind of abusive alcoholic, good one day, bad da next. Ya brothers can fight back. Can manage it._

 _But what about ya kid? What's he supposed ta do? Leo said it completely right. Can't you see that? Sandro's handling *your* bad temper. Ya think Dad'd be proud ta see this? See ya bummin' off ya own boy's self-control? Dependin' on him ta soak your fire when he don't stand a chance against ya in the ring? That's what it is. You're gonna be creamin' him like ya wish ya could cream Leo or a Foot Ninja, and he's gonna take it because ya ain't given him any other choice. And because he *loves* ya._

 _He's fourteen years old._

 _Da fuck is this his job for?_

 _What's wrong with you?_

 _You's da_ _parent._

* * *

Sandro couldn't hear exactly what his father was saying, but he could hear by the hisses and growls that Raphael and Leo were having an argument halfway down the hall.

He retained icy composure and watched to make sure Wildcard didn't change her mind and insist on 'protecting' him from Raphael like she'd half-hinted at the day she'd met him. Wildcard tugged her boots on, and didn't look up. Maybe they were both on the same page about this kind of thing. That made sense. If Wildcard's father was the one in a bad mood, and she mandated Sandro leave the house, Sandro would absolutely obey her. There were things you didn't want to show the outside. Things you didn't want to be _judged._ Things which nobody could help you with, because they could only be solved by you.

Nothing bad would happen today. Sandro would stay calm. He knew how to handle his dad, and had been doing so for years. He knew when to be quiet, and when to push himself, and, by the end of the practice session, Raphael would calm down.

Wildcard shot a glance up at Sandro.

He breathed deep, recognizing _pugnaciousness_ in her face. If he didn't convey that he could handle things—if he looked even remotely frightened—she'd stay and she'd try and chew out Raphael _herself_. Tiny, tiny, tiny her. She'd listen to all the things Raphael would say, and she'd judge them, and watching her turn against Raphael (because how could she understand?) would haunt Sandro. It wasn't something he wanted.

Fortunately, Sandro was not afraid. "Have fun," he told her. "Stay out of trouble."

"No promises," she mouthed more than said.

Sandro heard only the scuff of feet on flooring, but he _felt_ the tectonic force rushing up behind him. MOVE! FIGHT! Sandro grabbed for a kama on his back and spun around to stand his ground and meet the charge. He had a split second to register that both Raphael's sai were sheathed.

Then his father had _pounced_ him, getting both arms all the way around the back of his shell. This wasn't an attack. This was an embrace. Sandro froze from head to tail, kama still half drawn from its holster.

"Ain't no dojo practice today," Raphael promised from overhead, voice hoarse. "C'mere, _c'mere._ Ah'm sorry. Ah almost didn't catch it. Please, Sandro, ya don't have ta- Ah'm _sorry_. Ah'm still as sorry as Ah was."

He'd 'caught' it?

Sandro didn't twitch. His half-sneer facial expression lingered, a byproduct of a half-invoked fighting trance. He felt a palm stroke over the back of his head and then linger there.

This version of reality had never happened before. It wasn't a valid conversational option. It was impossible. No one ever stepped in to help him; no one ever intercepted the adversary; and Raphael was the miniboss to be _overcome,_ not a fellow player, not someone who could potentially _choose differently._ Everything about this was _always_ up to Sandro. Only Sandro. Suggesting otherwise trivialized and insulted the sheer experience of living through it.

"Yay!" Wildcard squealed, bolting up to them and throwing her arms around Sandro and part of Raphael. "Achievement Unlocked! Level Up! Weeee!"

The kama slipped from Sandro's shaking, numb fingers, and sagged back into its holster. He reached hesitantly around his father, to cling to his armor. When Raphael didn't push him away, Sandro squeezed as tightly into the embrace as possible. Raphael let him. Tears beaded. Raphael rocked him in place, and Sandro finally dared to lose his composure, his control, his head for judgement calls, his death grasp on 'calm.'

This was all still new.

It was still surreal.

Years and years of managing the emotions of someone older, bigger, and _mean,_ took form in the shape of sobs, and wrecked him to the point where he couldn't have held his feet on his own.

Poor Mom was probably _so_ confused.

* * *

Raphael didn't end up needing a punching bag or anything else that morning. Whatever Act of God had beamed compassion into his brain, it had flipped him away from focusing on all the bad and frustrating stuff which had happened to and around him during the week, and now his brain was fixed entirely on his son. Raphael chilled out almost completely, like a full bonfire tossed clear into a lake, from FULL FLAMES to psseewwwwnothing in the snap of fingers. Yeah, he'd been a little shaky and stiff and tense on hugging Sandro, after-effects from being so mad at whatever had pissed him off, but then that drained away, too.

The two of them left the center of the house and ended up going to the weight room, where father and son could have a bit of privacy from all the anxious brothers and/or women.

Wildcard did not end up leaving. After sharing a victory dance with Michelangelo, she crept down the hallway to find out what had become of her Ninjitsu instructor, who, as far as she was concerned, was no longer off the hook with regards to teaching her that morning. Somebody had better entertain her, lest she contrive to entertain herself!

She found him in the altar room, praying. He looked a little gray. She hurried up beside him, and took seiza, clasped her hands, and closed her eyes.

"Dear Splinter," she prayed obnoxiously and out loud, "Thank you for Sensei, he's a hero. Sincerely, Wildcard."

A big deep breath, and a big deep sigh rattled the internal chambers of a turtle shell beside her.

"Should I have signed it with something else?" she wondered. "Yours Truly? Love? From? Yolo? Amen? I'm not sure how these things work. I'm still a prayer newb."

She had not previously been aware she was stressed. She had not deigned to consciously notice the weird echos of her own parent problems in Sandro's. At least Sandro had two. Parents. And a loving host of uncles, and a grandpa, and...

An elbow looped around her from the side, and she got pulled in under the arm of a kimono and squeezed there for a bit. Her stress imploded and she started shaking and burrowed into the little alcove of space which had been given to her, needing what Sandro needed, needing it from _someone_ , reflecting his emotions like a mirror, like a _twin_.

"Thank you," she finally mumbled, feeling tiny.

She _was_ tiny. Sensei patted her gently to let her know she was excused a lecture on personal space this time around. He seemed less ill than he had been a second ago, too, and that warmed her up and calmed her down and promised her that she was in exactly the space she ought to be, and that she hadn't stolen that space or delusionally imagined that it was allotted for her.

* * *

Outside, Mikey used every grain of his super awesome ninja stealth to actually get a peek in the shrine without alerting Leo to his presence and sending Mr. Propriety and Order back into Aloof Mode.

Mikey didn't grin. He slumped and clasped both hands to his chest and curled his fingers into a little heart. Maybe he didn't have the words to describe it like a professional, like Donnie, but Orange Turtle was pretty sure this apprenticeship here was good for two people. Like medicine, like chicken noodle soup, for loneliness. And Mini was even getting dosages before adulthood hit and things got harder.

He wouldn't talk about it with April and Raph and stuff. He wasn't sure they'd understand. They got out more.

But! If it was going to work long term, Mikey _probably_ ought to figure out what was up with Mr. Hamilton... and why he and Leo kinda acted weird around each-other all Thanksgiving.


	17. A Pinch of Honesty

Joker was mixing sauce for lasagna when his _Animal-Themed-Ninja-Is-Watching-Me_ senses began tingling. He raised his head, blinked skeptically out into his household, and then turned around to find a very large turtle hanging upside down outside his window sill (quite like a bat), trying to disarm the bola launcher trap with a stick before it misfired on him.

Click! He succeeded, and levered open the window.

"Hi!" Michelangelo greeted Joker winsomely. "Can I visit?"

"I do believe I told you that you were to use the door from now on," Joker was nevertheless quite impressed Mikey had worked out how to disarm a bola launcher. Those things were _crazy_ unintuitive.

"N'aw, that was only if I'm visiting Mini," reminded a turtle as he made climbing headfirst into a sink through a window look positively graceful, which was a hard feat for someone who was three hundred pounds of walking, talking armor.

"So, you're visiting my... tulips then, are you? _Well,_ I don't mean to brag."

Michelangelo paused. "Huh. That's kinda weird. Leo said you had lovely tulips, too, what's with that?"

"Your brother has excellent taste in flower cultivars," Joker muttered over wooden spoon and sauce pan.

What Joker did not expect Sunshine to ask was, "Like buttercups?"

Joker gave a semi-intentional bob of body posture, and turned about to eye Michelangleo up and down (or down and up, seeing as he was still upside down.) "Pardon?" he fished, brow raised.

"Buttercups," Sunshine repeated.

Joker was unamused. (Or at least that was what he told himself.) He put down his spoon and dried off his hands. "I'll bite. You get to come in if you tell me what you're referring to."

"Aww yeahhhh!" Mikey cheered, and then slithered in completely through the window, and plopped himself on the counter top.

"Well?" Joker pushed, displeased.

"Okay! Right. You know how Leo has a nickname for, uh, Anastasia?"

"Exactly like everyone else does," Joker agreed, drawing out fresh onions and reaching for the knife rack. "You can call her 'Minimeme,' I don't find it offensive."

"Oh cool! Thanks! Um. Where was I? Oh! Well, 'Kinpoge' is Japanese for 'Buttercup,'" Mikey explained, kicking his legs off the side of the counter like a child. "Which totally doesn't fit the whole ninja training montage theme!"

Joker _knew_ he was being buttered up, and that Mikey was baiting reactions out of him, but he still sucked in slow breath between his teeth at his daughter's indiscretion. "Well that was risky of her," he muttered to himself.

"Where's it come from?" Mikey chirped, like he already knew the answer and was playing along to have it served to him. "It's too cute, dude, it just didn't make sense that Leo would be pick out something like that. It had to have been something she called _herself._ Is it a pet name, like 'Squirt?'"

Damn you, Sunshine. Go away. Or at least stop saying 'dude.'

Mikey beamed.

"No," Joker smiled thinly, and set to chopping those onions. "'Buttercup' is the name on her birth certificate."

Sunshine didn't seem thrown off or astonished at all. "Not 'Anastasia?'" the turtle prompted anyway.

"'Anastasia' was the name she picked for herself when we moved here from Gotham." He chopped those onions.

Big baby blue eyes widened curiously. "What was her name in Gotham?"

"Terra."

"Terra...?"

Joker minced those onions. Patiently. Calmly. "Smith. Terra Smith."

"So what's _your_ name?" their plucky sunbeam wondered.

"Ah-ah-ah," Joker waved the knife and glanced back at him. "That's not your business."

Mikey leaned back, tucked his chin, and looked absolutely adorable. "Leo seems to know," he pouted, eventually.

"Doubt it." Onions traveled on the flat of a knife, knife full by knife full, into the sauce.

"I mean, Leo seems to know that she's not exactly who she says she is, and that neither are you," Sunshine suggested. "You aren't worried?"

"It's not his business either," Joker waved dismissively. "Lots of people use aliases to escape from old lives. Or jealous ex-girlfriends."

Hook set! Joker had plenty of lies pre-built to distract and titilate. Most were constructed from the entrails of real stories, but changed, exaggerated, and understated to twist them completely. In one example, the story of Harley was transformed into an explanation for where Wildcard's 'mother' was, describing her as an obsessive and neglectful individual with a restraining order put out on her.

"Mini's close to him," Michelangelo said, instead of taking the bait.

Joker glanced back, impressed by his focus. "Pardon?"

"Leo," Mikey elaborated. "He's close to her. Does it bother you?"

"Why would that bother me?" Joker honestly wondered. (Exactly how much had this golden fluttermuffin put together without help? Clearly no one _else_ was so informed, or there'd have been backlash starting from Donatello and ending at the actual parents... Or at Batman.)

"I'm not sure it should," Michelangelo confessed, "except Donnie really rode my tail hard about getting 'close to' an unrelated kid, like it made me a stalker or something. And you got mad at me, too." He scuffed one foot bashfully against the other.

Joker scoffed. "I threatened you because I _had_ to. It's in the Ultra Protective Dad Manual. Chapter six, paragraph three. I checked."

"So you don't hate me for that?"

"What? How could anyone possibly hate you? That's probably against some kind of international regulation against animal cruelty. Also it's impossible." Hmm. Sunshine still looked nervous instead of giddy. "How close are _you_ to her?"

Michelangelo writhed uncertainly back and forth, before confessing to a very candid and informative: "Sometimes she has hella bigga cries where only I can see."

Oh-ho-ho. Joker guiltily put that knife safely off to the side. "That's probably good for her." He didn't say more.

"So it really _doesn't_ bother you? I can... ya know, have heart-to-hearts with her and stuff?"

Oh dear, engage flippant defensive protocol. "Sunshine, there are many times in life when a parent has to relinquish some of the illusion of control to another care provider. First it's babysitters, then it's elementary school teachers, next it's other peoples' parents when they have the kids over for a sleepover, then it's coaches, field trip chaperones, doctors, or correctional officers, and then one day they leave you and move out and have their own lives. If you're lucky, they still love and/or like you by the end, or they go to college and at least stay dependent on you another decade."

"Ooh, we never did that," Mikey pointed out almost gleefully, taking the morale-boosting-bait like it was made for him and he was happy for a diversion. "We stayed together! Actually we'd probably still be living with our dad if he hadn't, ya know, gone to visit Buddha."

"Mn. Well... you have unique circumstances that make bonding together clannishly beneficial for your mutual survival," Joker pointed out with a wooden spoon instead of a knife. "Green and so forth. Anyway, your brother is two birds killed with one stone. He has my seal of approval as a 'coach.'"

Blue eyes sharpened. Joker raised a brow.

"He's _ignoring_ you," Mikey said, with a little edge. "He's being all kinds of impolite, pretending like she doesn't have parents. But instead of getting mad, or jealous, or, like, weirded out, you almost seem to _like_ it. Like it's funny or something. You keep smiling, not like a mad smile, but like a 'I'm trying not to laugh smile.'"

Curse turtles who knew the difference between different kinds of smiles! Curse fluttermuffin manchildren who somehow simultaneously had attention defficit disorder and absolutely insane levels of observational skills! Joker gave a 'You cheat at this game' glare.

Mikey looked seemed somewhere between 'innocent,' 'amused,' and 'I'm an African Cheetah and just cornered my meal for the evening,' which the person he was talking to recognized and found hilarious and completely respectable.

"It is funny," Joker finally agreed, turning back to his sauce. "He thinks I'm the enemy. That he has to _fight_ me for her, drag my 'claws' out of her or something." Joker shrugged with both arms and hands. "I don't know where he gets it from; who does he think read her Aesop's fables for bedtime stories and gave her Disney movies as a child?"

"Whoa. You get those vibes but it doesn't bother you?"

Joker waved a hand to bestow offhanded absolution. "He's young; he'll learn."

"Naw, it sounds serious to me, what gives?" Mikey insisted, pushing himself to the ground and coming up curiously to peek around at the kitchen's chef while simultaneously keeping a wide (respectful) berth.

"As long as he stays quiet about, why should it bother me?" Joker wondered aloud while simultaneously levying instructions. "If anything, it just means he's going to do his job twice as well."

Mikey's snout scrunched up. "What's his job?"

"Training an up-and-coming superhero," Joker answered, tasting his pasta sauce. "And keeping her safe, naturally."

Mikey thought about that. "Heh. Yo, he totally _will_ keep her safe, it's like his middle name. Can she keep up?"

"Ask _him_."

"Hee! Why Leo, though?"

"He stuck. I'd tried pushing her into a better role model before. She'd gotten bored."

"I guess they are _both_ pretty stubborn."

"Mn, and imagine my delight when she finally met her match. In retrospect I suppose his interest in training her is unusual, but once he'd decided to do it, he _pounced_ on that chance like a cat on nip. Now she's doing her own laundry and, really, what more could a parent want? Ten out of ten, would submit child for apprenticeship again. I'm not one of those people who needs to be _liked_ in order to appreciate a job well done."

Either 'stumped' or 'satisfied,' Michelangelo sat back against the cupboards, and tilted his head to the side like he was thinking.

"I'm also not messing with providence with the childrens' friendship on the line." Joker mentioned. He added spices. Bit of this, bit of that, few flakes of this, hefty shakes of that.

"You, um," Mikey hesitated, rubbing bashfully at an arm, "you really _do_ like Sandro?"

"I don't have a choice. If my daughter was a hound, she'd have pissed on every inch of him and then bitten me in the leg to make sure I knew where her territory was. But," Joker tossed Michelangleo a bemused look, "yes, I think Sandro is not only an excellent influence on her, but also extremely adorable. The zoo was bliss, I had to remain in normal parent mode and not start crying from laughter."

Mikey perked up and seemed interested and elated as he soaked that up and believed it.

"I wouldn't have known it before she found him, but a friend was exactly what she'd been missing her whole life," Joker added.

"Is she home enough?" Sunshine asked, suddenly. "You get time with her, right?"

"Some." Joker thought on that, and then shared a slight grimace of confession with the turtle. "I'd like to have more, but she's in that weird stage of life she she's pulling away from me and defining herself as independent. It's not Sandro. I've seen her more since she met Sandro. She's just... a teenager. I know it's manifested a little hilariously by her glomming onto your entire family, but I like to think the result is just that she'll be less aloof, alone, and/or callous than she might otherwise have turned out."

"I kinda got that impression too," Mikey admitted, looking slightly nervous. "I just wasn't sure what _you_ thought."

"I quite _like_ your brother," Joker admitted, albeit for a certain definition of 'like.' "He reminds me of an old friend. Don't worry so much. I promise he won't get knifed in a dominance spat. I'm grateful for the role he's playing in helping my little troublemaker decide what she wants out of life. Though... maybe don't tell him that." Wink. "He might lose his intense protectiveness of her, and I'm counting on that to keep her safe."

"Hehe! Don't worry about _that,_ that's Leo all the way! Uh. You... You still want more time with her though," Sunshine could tell. "Can I help?"

"Mn. I probably won't be getting more time with her unless it's also time I'm getting with Sandro. And I'm not sure if April and Raphael will ever be entirely ready to trust letting the children out with such minimal supervision, so..." he shrugged, and went to start the noodles. "One can dream. The children have thrived outside on their lonesome before; perhaps they will again. I might not be able to keep her in one spot, but Sandro—oh, sweet Sandro—I'm sure I can seduce him home with food. He's too polite to refuse."

"So..." Mikey pushed himself off the counter again, and came over. "So, yo, is her real name some kind of secret? Like I can't tell people?"

"Please refrain from using the words 'yo' and 'dude' in my presence, as your completely artificial surfer-boy-rapper accent sometimes grates my nerves when it gets too thick. And yes," Joker confirmed. "It's not a common name, and there are... people masquerading as 'good guys' who would be very excited to hear she'd been found. I worry about that more than I worry about the silly social ploys of aloof samurai ninjas.

"Are you in trouble with any _actual_ good guys?"

Joker chuckled a little. "A few," he admitted.

"Who?"

"Oh, you don't want to know, Sunshine." He pinch one green cheek, like a grandmother, and tugged affectionately. "It'd ruin our friendship."

Mikey winced and then giggled slightly and turned rosy. A text message reading 'omigodihasanewfriend!' might as well have popped up in a thought bubble over his head. Then, clearly delighted, the turtle leaned over to peek inside that sauce pan. "What did you put in this? It smells _fantastic_."

"Portobellos, but I was very careful with them," Joker explained, leaning back to eyeball his sauce. "They're very rebellious mushrooms. They like to ruin and/or make things spectacular, all willy-nilly, whatever strikes their fancy." He looked up at Sunshine to confess, "It's why I like them."

"It it a lasagna sauce? A vegetarian lasagna sauce?"

"I was in the mood for a challenge."

"Ooh, let me tell you what _I_ do, the secret's in how you complement the _noodles._ Do you have any nutmeg?"

The tulips were missing out.


	18. Red and Blue - Part 1

"Can I talk to you about something?" Donatello asked, leaning in the bathroom doorway as Sandro was brushing his teeth.

"Sure," Sandro spit and turned on the faucet to wash the paste down the drain. "What about?"

"It's been some time, and your parents are considering introducing some rules governing how long Wildcard stays over."

Sandro frowned, but admitted, "Wild and I have been talking about it."

Donatello blinked. "You have? Er... how so?"

"Well she kinda agrees she wished she had a day reserved to hang out with her Dad a bit more," Sandro explained, proud to have been proactive on the matter and to already have solutions to propose. "Which would have to be Tuesday, because that's the day he gets off work every week. And then both she and I agreed it might be a good idea to give my parents a break from her loud obnoxious blathering every Saturday. You know, so they can relax after they get home? We just haven't talked to Uncle Leo yet, but I'm _pretty sure_ he'd give her two days off from Ninjitsu each week."

Donatello shook his head, murmuring, "Color me _impressed,_ I thought you wouldn't budge an inch."

Sandro tucked his chin, not sure whether to be embarrassed or belittled or proud.

Donnie waved a hand and stood up to approach him with a smile. "I'm on _your side_ ," he said. "I think you've come up with a really good compromise to suggest to them. I also wanted to suggest to them that these just be tentative guidelines instead of hard and fast rules. I don't want you to feel like she's been _kept_ from you."

"It's..." Sandro took a deep breath. "We don't have to do _literally everything,_ and we don't have spend _every second_ together. I like literature, she likes podcasts... Plus I have to let her get some crazy stories to bring back to tell me, right?"

Donnie smirked. "Yeah. Well, hopefully we can get you some crazy stories of your own. Mikey and Leo have been suggesting Raphael take you out agility training. Just you. I'm also going to suggest to your parents them that if _we_ want to spend one-on-one time with you outside of these two rest days, that Wild is still welcome to come to the dojo and to the lab and to board with Michelangelo, whoever it is who isn't busy with you. It'll be good for her schedule, her father's babysitter concerns, and it'll keep her underground and not space jumping off buildings."

Sandro perked up and smiled back a little. "You're... you're going to let her over? Like you did when I was visiting New York?"

Donnie nodded.

Sandro liked that, liked it a lot. Wild needed the kind of structure to her day which a solid family could provide to her, and she needed that structure not to be getting interrupted. For his uncles to take a stand in evening out her education plus everything out like that... it showed they cared about her. It showed they cared about _him_ and what mattered to him. "Thanks. Like... a lot. What did you mean about _you_ wanting to spend one-on-one time with me, though? You... can already, right?"

"I-I'm not sure if you realize, but sometimes people—especially your mother who gets to see you less and who isn't used to Wildcard yet—people feel a little like they're interrupting you if they approach while she's over. And we're never sure how to suggest activities to only _one_ of you. Like you said, you like literature... she likes science. Etc etc etc. So! Without disturbing you too much, I'm hoping to help you two loosen your death grasp on each other, and to get you moving freely in and out of activities with one another and with other people, unafraid of being separated."

Sandro thought about it, and nodded. "I understand, uncle."

"You do." Donatello seemed relieved. "Well. I also don't want anyone enforcing some idea of 'normal' on you arbitrarily and from afar, without them being there for you in the day-to-day. That'd just be a trip back in the opposite direction again. If it doesn't work—if these 'break days' aren't gentle or natural enough and you're feeling agitated out of your shell again—I will suggest to April to drop the idea entirely. Better 'codependent' than angry and miserable, right?"

Sandro snickered and blushed a little. "Guess so." He felt cared for, and he felt noticed. "Okay. I'm game. But as a trial, okay?"

Donatello smiled and leaned forward. They touched foreheads. "Got it," his uncle agreed.

* * *

When April O'Neil moved home to Jersey City, the local news made a surprisingly big deal about it, enough that it showed up on Wildcard's news feeds.

Apparently it was a big source of Jersian pride, or New Yorker nose snubbing, or something hilarious and unimportant that nevertheless got people excited and talking. She'd opened up a branch office, given an interview about wanting to take a step back from the melodrama of New York and focus on the little things like optimizing work culture and logistics, or maybe even sending the message that people need personal time now and then, and the internet had blown up in a storm of interest.

It was like Joker had told her: April's company did a lot of Pro-Super coverage. Her 'stepping back' (ie: leaving oh-so-special New York to travel fifteen minutes next-door) was being inspected for whether it was a sign of comfort or weakness. Lots of people were writing speculative option pieces on it.

Wildcard was thinking about offering to stay home the first night April and Raphael actually got to come home so they could hang out with the fam for a proper, quiet, weekday evening. Whenever that happened to be. Right now April had a ton of work to do to get the new branch office up and working, and was fighting off paparazzi, and had to go 'home' to her new Jersey City penthouse every night and pretend to be normal. Donatello had set up the flat ahead of time with defensive systems, but Raphael hadn't even risked sleeping in the building the first night and had traded off defensive positions with Leonardo for a few hours of shut-eye.

At least this heightened period of activity and attention wouldn't last very long for them. April was a Business Woman, not a fashion, music, or movie star. They'd stop snapping their pictures—hopefully with no turtle ninjas getting caught in frame, period!—and wander off to more sensational things, and Mom and Dad would be able to chill and enjoy their new surroundings for a week or two before Christmas hit them like a train. Cause that was the thing about Christmas: Christmas took a lot of energy from adults! It was a lot of work! And from the way Sandro was telling the story, and by the looks of how the Lair was getting all fancied up, The Hamato Family Christmas Parties were _big news._ Just how big, Wild wasn't entirely clear yet, but people were coming from Japan so all bets were off. As far as Wild knew, there'd probably be aliens and superheros visiting.

(Thank Splinter that Joker had worn masks and face paint his entire super-villainous career, right? Cause he'd passed the Test of Thanksgiving with flying colors (and wildly successful Yams) and now was on the visitor list for that Christmas Party, and he'd already gotten the invitation card hand-delivered by Michelangelo and everything!)

Anyway. Offering to give Mr. And Mrs. Sandro's Parents a break! She'd have to bring the idea up to Sensei, he was _militant_ about her Ninjitsu schedule. If she was five minutes late, she'd end up ten minutes in Hashi. That was just how it was! Tardiness was a crime! And it was Leo's dojo, and Wildcard had submitted herself to the rules of Leo's dojo, so the rules simply had to be obeyed unless she wanted to fire him and go find another sensei. Which she did not. Good senseis were hard to f-

Wild paused flicking through her news feed and stared baffled across the sharp blacks and whites of the wintertime concrete jungle before her. She'd been sitting in a nook between two buildings and knew she was rather well concealed, and her night suit layers gave her good insulation against the snow, but that didn't mean she wasn't keeping one eye out for trouble.

There, ahead of her, climbing slowly across a rough brick wall with no handholds to speak of, was a child-sized individual in an unassuming hoodie and sneakers. This kid was literally climbing across the wall like gravity was sidewards. Like a gekko. Like a-

"-spider," Wildcard breathed to herself, pocketing her phone and creeping outward from her hiding place to try and get a closer look at this fantastic phenomena.

 _What on earth is he-or-she doing in Jersey? Sandro says Spiderman lives in Queens!_

She pulled herself up onto a building. She army-crawled and skittered across a rooftop. She'd lost her quarry, but managed to to track the barely-perceptible-dark-shape from one building to another. What a _jump_ this kid had cleared! Right across the street; Wild wished she'd seen it happen. She herself had to run across a tightrope of steel cables holding a street light aloft just to keep up without losing any momentum. She got one more building over, slid down a gutter pipe, ran like complete dare devil jumping from window sill to window sill, and finally stopped right beside a corner...

...and was waiting there, already grinning, the _instant_ her quarry climbed around that corner.

"Hi!" Wildcard gushed, startling this precious little Spiderling so hard that (she/he/it?) almost fell, slipped down the bricks, and had to hug tightly on to the corner with both arms. "I'm Wildcard! Nice to meet you!"

She couldn't see much of the face under that hoodie. Just a thin neck and a thin chin, and a mouth parted in the aftershocks of terror.

Uh oh. Maybe Wild should have waited for Spiderling to get a little further around the corner. "I won't come any closer," she added urgently, trying to tip the encounter in a better direction. "Please don't run."

"W-who are you?" Spiderling demanded, and her/his/its voice did nothing to suggest at a gender.

Wildcard considered her answer. "Well I'm wearing ninja tabi, a cat suit, and a face mask that makes me look like The Dread Pirate Roberts, so I must be awesome."

Spiderling was ill convinced of this awesomeness, but she/he/it did seem to pause and give some thought to exactly how dangerous Wildcard could be if she was comparing herself to Princess Bride characters and discussing fashion on top of fire escapes at midnight. "I don't know you," s/he said crossly, and at the same time like s/he was about to bolt.

"Well naturally that's why I had to introduce myself," Wildcard said. "Because it's not like I'm anybody you'd just know off the top of your head or something."

Spiderling looked her up and down. "You're a _ninja,_ " she accused like 'ninja' was a dirty word (Wildcard was going to go with 'she' for now, although she would be completely happy no matter what gender her new friend turned out to be).

"Well I'm not a _bad_ ninja," Wildcard protested her innocence.

"Is there any other kind?"

Wildcard considered. "Batman," she concluded. "Batman's a good ninja."

"He doesn't _live_ here," Spiderling argued. "Only Foot Clan ninja live here."

Wildcard clutched her heart and staggered on poor Michelangelo's behalf. "Nickelodeon would like to have a word with you..."

"It's not a cartoon," Spiderling mumbled from her perched up there on the corner. "I know to be on the look out for them. I know not to talk to people like you."

"I'm just some kid breaking curfew who likes climbing walls," Wild protested. "Do I look like I have evil organization logos branded anywhere on me? There is the compass on my back but that's just a subtle youth rebellion motiff."

Spiderling, all crumpled and half-hiding in a really cute way around the edge of that bridge, fidgeted in place and seemed to reconsider the whole meeting and what Wildcard's objective could possibly be, looking her up and down. "I-I..." she hesitated, like she _wanted_ to make contact, before suddenly rocking and place and chattering something like a mantra: "I don't get seen, I don't talk to people, I don't want to meet whoever you're with!"

Wild crossed her arms and looked away. "Well fine, _don't_ be my friend. I thought you were cool."

Spiderling went deadly silent for a second. "You thought I was _what_?"

Wild looked back suspiciously, pretending to be a little offended. The reality was that Spiderling had just opened like a book, and all those lessons from Joker about reading people now made the story plain to see. Spiderling attended a normal school, was a social outcast, and wistfully wished she could be cool or even just normal. She was outside in secret despite the cautionary tales imprinted on her by loving and protective parents, not because she was angry at them, but because she needed air. She needed to be _good_ at the thing which set her apart. Wild understood. "Cool," Wild said. "It's okay, Spiderling, you don't have to be my friend," she turned away and sat herself down on the fire escape. "I'm used to it."

Hook. Line. Sinker. Wildcard didn't even have to be looking at her (him? it? should she rotate genders so that she didn't end up surprised in the future?) to keep her attention. In fact, turning away created the illusion that Spiderling had a choice, and that Wild wasn't already in control of the situation. 'The only difference between winning over friends and callous manipulation,' Joker had said, 'is how well you maintain your toys.'

"Wh-what did you call me?" Spiderling asked. From the sound of things, he (Wild was going to use 'he' for awhile) had climbed a little closer. _Sandro is going to be so proud of me!_

"Spiderling," Wildcard said without looking back. "Do you like it?"

"I-I'm not! No! I'm not a spider!"

"Lizardling?" Wild wondered.

"No! I'm not that either!"

"I like Spiderling," Wildcard decided, leaning back on her palms and kicking her legs. "It just sounds like a good name. Like it's cute, but—look out!—it's only a matter of time before it's gonna end up badass! That's what they call juvenile tarantulas, 'slings,' it's a combination of 's' for spider and 'ling.'"

Silence echoed behind her.

 _Be patient._

"Y-you like t-turantulas?" he asked, and it sounded like he was _even closer._

"Well, my only friend raises snakes. I know it's not the same thing at all," Wild explained, flopping back against the snow-covered fire escape and pulling out some harmless-looking glitter grenades to juggle them, "but there's a lot of overlap between reptile enthusiasts and arthropod and other insect enthusiasts, so in the end I just ended up watching YouTube videos on tons of different exotic pets."

"Does, um, does your friend climb buildings in the dark, too?"

"Nah," she waved a hand. "He's a mutant. I have to visit him where _he_ lives."

"O-Oh."

 _I'm gonna get Sandro and me another frieeee-eeennnd!_ Somewhere in the distance a garbage truck clanked loudly as it picked up it's burden.

"I-I gotta go," Spiderling blurted in a rush. "It was nice meeting you, bye!" He darted around the corner.

"Hey, I come out on Saturdays!" she whispered loudly after him.

And instead of him simply ignoring her, he called out the most adorable little acknowledgement of, "Okay!"


	19. Red and Blue - Part 2

Find me at Patre on dot com, my user name is Spydrouge!

...

* * *

In order to get some intelligence on the usual whereabouts of her subject of interest, Wildcard went to her old stomping grounds at the rec center and asked at the counter if they had one of Ms. Jane's business cards.

She was in luck. The card revealed Wild's ex-Aikido instructor taught at a large number of public rec centers across the greater New York, New Jersey, Newark, and Hoboken areas. She was in high demand for everything from pole fitness, to gymnastics, to martial arts; and she also seemed to be involved with a local performing arts center, which meant she was also a thesbian. What a lady!

Come to think of it, could Spider-Man work a steady job? Right, so maybe it made sense that she had to work double time to keep bread on the table for her entire family and put money in Spiderling's college fund and what-have-you. Heck, didn't Spider-Man probably make his own super hero costume? Add 'plasma canon resistant spandex' to her standard grocery bills, or whatever!

Back in October, Sandro had gotten her off alone to the side to inform her that her two favorite childhood cartoon franchises actually knew each other in real life. Spider-Man's name was 'Peter Parker' which lined up perfectly with intelligence Wildcard had gotten from her father that 'Ms. Jane,' had actually been Mary-Jane Parker, Spider-Man's wife. But Sandro had also told her that the Spiderfamily lived in _Queens,_ which was not only across the Hudson but quite a distance north, so what had Spiderling been doing out and about at midnight in southern _New Jersey?_ There was a considerably sized river and lots of miles between those two locations!Something didn't line up!

Wild had some guesses, some more feasible than other. The possibility that Spiderman and his wife were legally separated crossed her mind (oh no!) but then Raphael and April wouldn't have been inviting them over to their condo as a married couple. There were plenty of other possibilities. 1) Private School, 2) A second house that served as a hiding place in case any long-term nemeses were afoot, 3) Visiting with family relatives over the holiday, etc.

Unfortunately, she only had so many weeks until Christmas break rolled around and, of those weeks, the only school days she had on which to practice her investigative skills were Tuesdays. She was booked with Ninjitsu lessons the week! Maybe she could sneak in a peak at a school in that time frame, but the average opening _and_ closing hours for institutions of learning fell darn close to the hours she was supposed to be underground, and if she was late to practice by five minutes, Sensei would put her in Hashi for ten. And then get suspicious of her. After which he'd stalk her and totally ruin the surprise. Surprises like this deserved to be bundled up all in one hyperenergetic go!

So! If she wanted to maximize her chances of success, the first order of business was to guess Spiderling was older than ten. That would land him/her/it in middle school, which would be way easier than if he/she/it was in elementary school, because there was usually about a three-to-one elementary school to middle school ratio in the states (or at least in all the ones Wild had spent any considerable amount of time in). That solved a big quadrant of the overall mathematics problem from her, but the geographical distance between Queens and Greenville still left Wild with a large number of learning institutions to loiter around at closing hour. She couldn't visit them all in time.

Wildcard checked the online yellow pages just to see if any easy intel was available, but it turned out that there were a heck of a lot of Parkers everywhere. For all she knew, Spider-Man was unlisted, or even bumming a more thorough information security white-out off the Hamato family, courtesy of Donatello, with the kids none the wiser.

Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm. Well! Ms. Jane wasn't rolling in cash, but she'd always been neat and presentable, so Wild spent one evening looking up all the schools in the boroughs of Jersey City and New York City, public and private, and made a ballpark guess about what kind of neighborhood they might live in. She threw on a hoodie, jeans, and her yellow rain jacket on over her usual ninja kit, headed out the door with the sun pretty low in the sky, and sat and she headed across the Hudson for an hour or two to eat ice cream and see if she could spy the familiar salt-and-peppered hair of Ms. Jane as she picked up her as-of-yet-gender-unrevealed child.

Her first try was a bust, and she didn't find anything at all.

And, worse, she didn't catch hide or hair of Spiderling that Saturday, either. Phooey.

* * *

Wildcard strolled down the avenue, dodging secondhand maryjane smoke (Wildcard was feeling a little ironically punny), glancing across the chain linked fence that protected the recess yard, and watching as kids shuffled out of the building towards the waiting fleet of large, yellow school busses. The area had been plowed recently, and with all the pedestrian travel around the school, the snow had been reduced to little more than packed mud. Some of the high-schoolers who'd been let out an hour ago, were waiting for younger siblings. Other kids walked home, either solo with skips to their steps as they tried to outpace nightfall, or in packs that chattered and played with one another.

Ah, school. Wildcard had liked it once, but that had been before middle school. Back before teachers, students, parents, and administrators slowly grew jaded with the problems around them. Back when being in the PTA was still something parents got _excited_ about, and all your homework was in a workbook with comically big font, and, if you had questions, someone was happy to answer them.

Wild kept her eyes peeled. So far, no luck. It was impossible to eagle-eye each and every single one of the zillion students at the establishment, and many of them were as thin, androgynous, and hooded as Spiderling had been. Hadn't Ms. Jane driven an old Toyota? Silver. Had a dent on the rear bumper. What if she/he/it wasn't even _at_ school today? Meh, you win some, you lose some. Half the fun of games is playing them.

'It is not necessary to see _everything,_ Kinpōgekun,' Sensei had explained atop the city as they'd crouched and watched Foot agents bringing young recruits on a training run. 'Then all things blur into white noise, and one effectively sees _nothing_. What one does is trains the intuition to notice the oddities. The subtleties. When something is out of place, incorrect in number, or moving wrong.'

A herd of kids near enough to her own height surged past. They were running like they were trying to catch up with something, and they were laughing and jostling one another like people did when playing. Sentences like, "In trouble _this_ time," and "Getting away," and a number of different names floated out of the conversation, hooking Wildcard into pausing. She blinked thoughtfully to herself. She pivoted on heel, and sauntered slowly down the way towards crowded shopping marts, whistling to herself.

* * *

Pitchy and out-of-tune, Twisted Nerve by Bernard Herrmann floated down the street.

"Hey nerd," Jason drawled in the center of the crowd. "Aren't you supposed to be smart? That was really dumb, right Jay? Heheh! Pick yourself up, freak! C'mon, why don't you _read_ your way out of this one!"

 _Who is whistling that?_ "Let me go home," he begged, rubbing dirt and gravel out of his cheek and reaching nervously for his books.

"He said get _up!_ " a girl taunted, grabbing hold of his hair and pulling to dragging him to his feet, and he cried out in pain.

"Go on!" Jason taunted. "Throw another paper wad at me!"

An un-intimidating figure moseyed up with hands in pockets to review the state of things, still whistling at that grating pitch, still whistling _Twisted Nerve_. She didn't do anything to help, and the bullies didn't look twice at her, and they weren't scared of being watched.

Right, because they were all 'good kids.' Clean clothes, multicultural, bright smiles, high grades, honors classes, lots of volunteering. They expected the adult world to agree with them: their victim had wronged them, and they were rightfully upset about it.

By contrast, _he_ was presently dirty, disheveled, and even controversial. They didn't even have to talk about his mental state: he was dressed in a pro-Wikileaks hoodie, carrying weird books, and had anime pins all over his backpack, and apparently to the world that was some kind of crime. "I didn't," but he had, "I promise I didn't!"

"Yeah you did, everyone saw it. You think you're better than me? Than us? Do you know what really happens to freaks like you?"

"You all end up dead with _AIDS_ in the girls' street!" Jay howled. "And a hole in your _butt_ a mile wide!"

He'd have blushed red if he wasn't already red from exertion. The kids around him all busted out laughing and giggling, eager to all 'prove' that they understood the adult insult, even if they probably didn't.

"Well _that_ escalated quickly." The newcomer tipped her hood back and grinned wide, and she had a creepy broad grin. "Helllloo kiddes! Let go of the 'freak,' beating him up makes you look bad!"

 _What?_ He looked to her. Disbelief welled up inside him. Did he recognize her? Not her hair. Not really her face. He recognized that uncanny smile.

"Get _out_ of here," Damiqua said to her, for she was overstepping her bounds and therefore repulsive to them. "You don't even know what you're talking about."

"Says the person who just laughed at the undercover goatse reference." The newcomer feigned a dramatic gag. "Jay's parents have to clean their browser history more thoroughly, or at least to stop being hypocritical bigots about it, yeesh!"

"Who the heck are you?" another kid rounded on her. "You don't get to talk like that!"

"You his girlfriend, maybe wanna join him?" Jay taunted.

"Let's back up two steps before I get distracted arguing it's a free country," the creepily-smiling-girl said, far too delighted by her situation. "I told you to let go of him, and you're gonna do it, or you're going to regret making me angry. I'm kinda like the Hulk when I'm angry. Just less, you know, super powers. More insulting your intelligence."

"Uh, I don't think so, weirdo?" Monika was disgusted. "He's a troublemaker, and apparently you are too, so get out of here. Go run off to your little druggy friends or whatever."

"How about this, chicky-poo," the new girl compromised, and then—out of nowhere!—punched Monika in the face. And Monia fell to her butt in such disbelief that neither she nor anyone else could cry out for a second. The world seemed to slow down and stop. When she busted out screaming, one of her friends grabbed for the new girl, but New Girl just grabbed her back, flipped her onto the concrete with a crunch, and then swept out the legs of the people who came at her next, sending them tripping all over the place!

Jason, Jay, and Flitch rounded on her. They came at her the way they'd come at the opposing players during Football, in the same way the liked to herd _him_ into walls and slam him there (when he always had to suppress he knew they were coming). Instead of being overwhelmed, she grabbed Flitch's left arm, twisted it around to get control of his whole body, and shoved him between her and his friends at a painful angle. She tripped up Jay, and threw her elbow into Jason's nose. Crunch! She shoved Jason back to make him stumble. She grabbed his ankle out from beneath him with her heel, and she pushed him onto the ground.

* * *

"Get her!" someone yelled, but no one immediately tried, ha! Eh, middle schoolers weren't usually hardened gang thugs by this stage of their life, and were actually quite terrible at ganging up on people if fights turned scary for them.

Capitalizing on that, Wild drew out the pocket knife, tossed it up in the air as it snapped open, caught it, and grabbed up the chief bully by his collar. Someone screamed.

"D-don't hurt me," the boy mumbled, while still glancing to her elbow like he was going to make a wrestle out of it.

"Your nose already hurts, right?" Wild asked, and then threw her elbow around his neck, grabbed the broken cartiledge and twisted.

He shrieked, grabbing at her, and she held on tight.

"Keep fighting, and it'll keep hurting," she mentioned.

He went slack.

"At's a good boy!"

"Psycho!" a girl was puffed up red with tears and stress. "Get someone! Get an adult!"

Wild gave a shrill laugh, arresting everyone. "I don't go to school here!" she squealed. "You bitches will never find me! Now pay attention, because I'll cut marks on his face you kiddies will be seeing for the rest of your lives, every day of school till the day you graduate, and you'll know each and every day it's _your fault_ because you could have _stopped me_ if you'd just shut up for six seconds."

Everyone stared at her, eyes bugged.

"Please d-d-!"

She got off the boy, and she dragged him to his feet and kept a hold on his collar. "Be good," she told him. "No beating up freaks, nerds, or pretty boys. Got it?"

"Uh huh," he whimpered past his new busted lip and purple nose. "Uh huh!"

She let go and pushed him back to his friends, who turned around with him and ran, screaming things over their shoulder at her. That left her alone with an extremely androgynous, absolutely mortified pre-teen boy huddled against the storefront, and he gaped at her.

"Hiiii," Wildcard drawled as she put away her switchblade. "Don't mind me, just a bit of civic service...!"

"Wh-who are you?" he whimpered, horrified.

"Name's _Wildcard,_ " she greeted blithely. "I've been looking for you, sweety, how have you been?"

The kid gaped a moment. "Y-you..." He stepped towards her, and his face contorted in anger. "You ruined _everything!_ " he screamed.

Wild blinked, recoiling slightly. She looked wide-eyed from him to her folded knife, and then quickly stuffed the latter in her pocket. Poof! Gone. "Huh, that's funny, cause you looked like you needed help!"

"I didn't need help! It was my fault, I provoked them! I need them to stop hating me, so I can survive going to school with them, and you just made everything worse and they're probably going to tell teachers and stuff, and they're never g-gonna let me live this down!"

"You have a black eye!" Wild protested her innocence. "Was I just supposed to sit there and let them wail on you when I could have done something?"

" _I_ could have done something!" he screamed at her. "Why don't you think I _did!?_ Nobody can-! You can't just-! The whole school is going to hate me! I could get suspended!" he choked on his anger, on a sob. In bright lighting, she could see his androgyny hadn't been a trick of the darkness. He was pretty, and he had long hair and freckles, and he was very thin and slight of build.

Wildcard stood there, awkward and tense, not sure what to do. She'd literally climbed out of windows at her school before, and all she'd gotten was detention. Or complete apathy. "Um," she cleared her throat. "It's not like they can prove anything."

"Their bruises aren't enough!? What if they say _I_ did it!?"

"Pfft, have you seen yourself in a mirror lately?" Wild snickered. "No one's going to believe that."

"You don't know that! You don't know anything! Why are you here, are you _stalking_ me!? Are you insane!?"

"Yes!" Wildcard agreed, glad to know the answer to a question. "Which is clearly not helping!"

"No! No it's not helping!"

"Can't win them all!" she gave a tremendous, smiling shrug.

"It's my life you stepped in! You screwed everything up!"

"Hey, I've learned a very valuable lesson from all this! Now I know to stand by while people get attacked by entitled future frat boys! Mind my own business, and all that! Heavens forbid I step in and defend them when they're all alone in the universe! And to think, here I was trying to heroically rescue you! Won't make the same mistake again, promise!"

"Y-you...!" His gaze flicked side to side, and then back at her. "Were... were you whistling the... the Whistle Song?"

"As it was whistled by California Mountain Snake?" she asked rhetorically.

"She's a bad guy," he said. "The character."

"Huh. Well, that's fair. I might be uh," Wildcard lifted a hand, waved it a little, and coughed, "fuzzy on the details of how to do the good guy thing. Still learning! Apprentice good guy, veteran badass, that's me!"

Spiderling stared at her. He sniffed weakly, dabbing at one of his eyes. It was about to bloom into a beautiful shiner. "You aren't after me? Y-you... you saw me climbing, you recognized me. And then you showed up here?"

"Hey, technically I just heard them gushing to one another about how they were going to beat the stuffing out of someone. I had no proof it was going to be you."

"It was a coincidence?!"

"It was at least fifteen percent coincidence," she agreed sagely, except with a wink. "The other part was jumping on a bus from Jersey to Queens."

"To _here_. You know where I live?" Spiderling winced gloomily at her.

"Maaaayyybe!" Wildcard looked down the street, and then back at him. "Ya know, I'm kinda worried they're going to jump you the second I turn around."

He grimaced and sniffled a little.

"Can I walk you home?" she offered. "You can say no. I respect boundaries! Sometimes. Normally I need an incentive to respect boundaries, but not getting yelled at for trying to help someone officially qualifies. Incentive present!"

He didn't say anything, but he hesitantly looked down the street, and then shuffled sort of diagonally between the wall and her. Wildcard took the not-resisting for a form of implied consent. She trotted up next to him and accompanied him down the road.

"How old are you?" she asked after he'd had a few minutes to chill.

"Twelve," he mumbled.

"Fourteen," she supplied. "Are we legally old enough to babysit you?"

"I don't know," he said as if it were a stupid question. "No one's going to hire you to babysit me."

"Eh, it can't be that hard! I'd do it for five bucks. What? I'm a growing girl with an unusually active lifestyle! Those five dollar footlongs don't buy themselves, you know!"

"You really are insane!"

"Hey, if that's how you feel, just remember it could never be as bad as me turning in a random direction and initiating a fourth-wall break, narrating a flash back, or commenting on things in someone else's thought could it? Dun-dun-dun! Find out next time! Also, yes, I can read your mind. No, I can't. I'm bluffing. That was just a logical guess based on your most likely reaction. Ha! See how I did that? You were totally freaking out. Ha! I'm _fantastic_ at this! Sandro's going to be so proud, I'm making friends and everything!"

Spiderling seemed to finally realize where he stood with her, because he slapped a hand over his face and initiated a facepalm, and dammit if that wasn't just _beautiful_.


	20. Red and Blue - Part 3

Sandro sat there with a hand over his face, rubbing his brows and the bridge of his nose as he listened to the retelling of this story on Wednesday. "Wild, for future reference..." he growled, "why exactly did you think threatening a bunch of twelve-year-olds with a switch blade was the appropriate course of action for the situation?"

"Escalation! Punches were old news, I had to bring out new and advanced technology! Also, most of them looked older than twelve. For reference!"

He looked at her between his fingers. "You turned a low-key physical scuffle into an armed assault. Are you unaware of the difference? The one gets you a detention, and the other puts you in jail. And you did it in full view of... how many witnesses, exactly?"

Wildcard waved a hand dismissively. "It's still just a scuffle, which no adults saw, and across state boundaries!"

"Crossing state boundaries just means the _FBI_ could get involved!"

"What! Pfft, c'mon Rapunzel, the FBI doesn't even get involved in all the drugs and gang violence going on in Queens. There was pot and proper dope all over the campus doorstep, and you think they're going to chase ghost stories of a kid with a pocketknife who didn't actually even cut anyone? There's not even proof Spiderling and BullyBoy didn't just get in a fist fight!"

"Well _sorry_ for having to go off television to assume people might take knife threats seriously! What if they describe you to someone who can do suspect portraits?!" That was a semi-legitimate concern, seeing as a number of superheroes which most certainly included Batman had computers monitoring whatever intelligence the police made publicly available, but:

"Never going to happen! Police department is already overloaded, understaffed, and broke AF! And, just because I could, I totally wore colored lenses, a wig, a padded bra, and a boat-load of makeup. My eyeliner wings were _on point._ " She kicked up her heels on the table. "So no sweat!"

"Just... just..." Sandro sat back under his hand, and waved to her. "Continue with the story. Go on. _Then_ what happened."

" _Did_ something happen?" Donatello asked, stepping into the room with a suspicious glance Wildcard's way.

"I am glad you asked," Wildcard segued with great gusto, and since Sandro doubted she was going to tell Donatello or any other adult about this just yet, he reasoned she was about to whip up a half-lie, all-truth, fantastic diversion off the top of her head.

Then the front door slammed open. Leonardo entered at an aggressive stomp, shut the door with unnaturally accurate control and precision, stepped off each jika tabi to leave it in it's position at the door, and crossed the house at a pace. He reached the kitchen as he took off his snow poncho and hat, and he threw both garments onto the table, planted his hands on his hips, leaned over Wildcard, and stared down with an expression as hard and sharp as flint.

Wildcard folded faster than a card castle in a windstorm, bravado evaporating, dripping down until she'd nearly disappeared under the table. Donatello raised a brow. Sandro blinked, pulled out his phone, and snuck a picture.

"Err... Yes, Leo, can we help you?" Donnie prompted.

Silence.

"o hi sensei" Wildcard breathed from table level.

Leonardo didn't answer. His glare sat upon her like an inverted mountain, pointed downward.

Wildcard looked at her hands upon the edge of the table, and then back up at a very angry blue turtle. "In my defense," she whispered, "I was never taught any different."

 _Ooh-hoo,_ Sandro sat back, turning away the grin which lit up his face. _Straight to the teacher. Sis, you don't just go down with the ship, you light it on fire while it's sinking._

Wildcard withered away and dripped under the table with a plop.

"Hashi," Leo announced.

"Yes Sensei," she said, springing to her feet and rocketing out of the room at Mach-5. "Right away, Sensei!" Leo followed on her heels like an ominous cloud, silent lectures already overflowing from his personage, and Wild scampered like she was outright terrified of being swallowed whole.

Donatello, who had no idea what was going on, twisted about to watch. He looked down at Sandro. "Doesn't she usually _resist_ authority figures?"

Sandro gave a knowing tilt of his head and reached for the milk. He'd just have to wait patiently for the rest of the story. "Uncle Leo clearly filed for special scolding permits."

"Apparently. Is she _frightened_ of him?" Donatello frowned, trying to put the math of the situation together, and (bless him) willing to fight Leo, if need be.

Sandro smiled and gave a little shake of his head, pouring his milk. "No, she's fine, she's just done something to get herself in huge trouble. No idea how he knows what she's been up to, but—if I'm being brutally honest?—I find it _extremely satisfying_ that he does."

Donatello raised a brow. "Satisfying?"

"Yeah, I like to imagine him deep in meditation before bed, only to look up, staring mystically out into the void, with an ominous caption floating over his head, reading, 'Mentor senses tingling,' swiftly followed by, 'In father's name that's the sixth time in the past hour, what could she possibly be doing up there!?'"

Donatello coughed, and started laughing.

Sandro pulled the rest of Wildcard's breakfast to himself. She clearly wouldn't be eating it.

* * *

Hahahahah! That look on her face! Today's pic had gone into Sandro's favorites: Uncle Leo homing in like an ultra perceptive mother who'd somehow heard shenanigans from six rooms away, Wildcard ducking for cover automatically, hot-footing it without any need for an explanation for how this was possible, just trying to abandon ship before the judgmental glare could arrive.

As dawn ticked nearer, Michelangelo was tardy in returning from patrol. Donatello made a comment about him probably being off messing around in the sewers, and Sandro heard him offer to walk Wildcard home instead. She hummed and hawed over Donnie's offer, despite really not needing any chaperone at all, and then suddenly asked if Sandro could walk her instead.

Sandro perked up, rethinking his evil plan to maybe forward pictures to Wild's Dad. He'd been grounded from leaving the Lair since August.

"Alright," Donatello decided. "But, Sandro? You bring her to the manhole and come straight home. No going topside."

Sandro jumped up and quickly pocketed his phone. "Yup!" he agreed. "Thanks!"

He and Wild didn't actually do or say much as they walked the Lair, he with his coat on and his kama over his back and his hands in his pockets, her skipping along in rain boots and a jacket. "Is it cold up there?" he did ask when they'd reached the ladder.

"It's getting there," she agreed as she pulled a thin scarf around her face.

"Are you gonna be warm enough?"

"Heh." She turned and gave him a big hug. "Now I will be!"

D'awww. He squeezed tightly back.

* * *

When Wildcard arrived at the domicile, Dad gave her got one of those sultry, heavy-lidded, 'I know you broke the rules and I am in angry cougar mode,' looks. What was it with the parents around here!? They just magically knew everything, except for when they were completely clueless!

"Sensei already wiped the floor with me!" she exclaimed. "I got an etiquette lesson and everything! I still can't feel my left elbow!"

"I see," Joker said, fingers tight on the back of the couch chair. "How about you start off at the beginning and tell me the whole of where you were Tuesday afternoon?"

She eyeballed him. "Only if you tell me how you knew I was anywhere at all."

"Deal," Joker agreed.

A completely unexpected and very familiar voice interrupted with: "Whoa, seriously?"

Joker shrugged and looked towards the kitchen. "How else is she supposed to learn how to lie between her teeth if I don't let her practice on me?"

"Ooh good point, we always got to practice on eachother-!"

" _Sunshine?"_ Wildcard disbelieved, rushing forward to peer around the corner and into the kitchen, where she found—of all people!—Hamato Michelangelo sitting on the counter top in her house, right next to where a quiche was baking in the oven. He had a deck of cards in hand and was shuffling. "What are _you_ doing here!?"

"Creaming me in rummy," Joker admitted. "He's a dirty cheat, by the way, no holds barred at all. And to think, he write _childrens' comics._ "

"Children goof off, Mr. Hamilton!" Mikey stuck out his tongue, winked at her, and bridged that deck of cards.

Gasp. "YOU told him!" Wildcard shrieked in betrayal.

Mikey busted out laughing, and Wildcard looked in horror from him to Joker. For reasons unknown, Dad's expression had just mellowed out considerably, like he found everything about this situation vaguely amusing. Fifteen minutes into explaining herself, Wildcard wondered if maybe it wasn't a relief to have someone else there besides herself and her Dad, taking the edge off off everything with jokes and jibes _she_ couldn't get in trouble for. Dad sure seemed way calmer about this instance of 'Meeting a Super Hero' than he had about her bumping in to Tony Stark, and _that_ had been a complete accident!

"So naturally I offered to walk poor Spiderling home," she explained. "As was only gallant of me."

"Oh naturally," Joker pulled out a chair at the kitchen for her.

"And then what happened?" Michelangelo prompted, dealing her in to a game of rummy as Dad poured them drinks.

"Well... So it went something like this:"

* * *

"Man. Where did you even come from?" he(she/it/schlee/Wild still wasn't 100% sure she'd heard correctly) grumbled to himself.

"Well, when a man really loves a woman," Wildcard began.

"Not what I meant!" Spiderling exclaimed, clearly horrified by where that could possibly go. "Don't you go to school or something!?"

"Nope, homeschooled!"

"Of course you are. You'd have to be, to be this crazy."

"Unless Ninjitsu and building robot spiders counts? I do head over to Sandro's house for that!"

"Who is 'Sandro'!?"

"My only other friend except for you!"

"I'm not your friend!"

"No but you will be!" Wildcard assured, throwing an arm over his shoulder and squeezing, to his eep. He was stronger than he pretended to be, and much stronger than he looked; she could feel it in the tension of his fingers on her arm, like he was scared she'd strangle him. "Ha! You're so jumpy! Don't worry, Spiderling—"

"—My name is _Shawn!_ "

"Shawn, Shhaawwwwn, Sha-aaawwww. Wait! This is very important: S-e-a-n or S-h-a-w-n?"

"The- I-I like the second one."

"That's the girl version!"

Cringe. "I _know_."

"Well quick reference check, are you a girl or a boy? Pfft, nevermind, it doesn't really matter! Don't worry, Shawn, I only punch bullies. And Sandro, but that's owed to our mutual sibling roughhousing agreement. True story, we wrote an amendment for it and everything! Can you tell I'm studying for a history exam? I know the word 'amendment!'"

"Oh my god, you're _stupid,_ too."

"Pfft, if I were stupid, would I be admiring the book on String Theory you're holding? By the way, It's all garbage, trust me, I've had a dimensional theory primer from the best of the best."

"Who, your mom!? You're apparently home-schooled!"

"Close, but no! His brother. Actually, I don't really have a mom, but I do loan one out for special occasions and to help me out with dresses, and he is very supportive of my pranking sense!"

"How do you manage to put so many words together so fast that don't make any sense!?"

"Easy! I always make sure it's all completely true and then take out the key words that would anchor people with regards to what the sentences actually mean!"

"Wait." Shawn looked suspiciously up at her. "You actually do it intentionally?"

"Well _of course,_ what did you take me for, a dime-a-dozen corner thug?" She gave a dramatic roll of her eyes. "Come now, Shawnling, would an idiot have been able to track you down?"

"Uh."

"Anyway!" she released him and gave him a hearty pat on the back that nearly knocked him over, "it's very useful for keeping people off balance when you want to get the measure of them, or escape without getting your eyebrows singed!"

"What... what...? Just... _What?_ "

"Ex _actly_."

They'd stopped at the white picket fence of a very tidy little suburban house in a halfway decent neighborhood (for Wildcard's standards at least). There were flowers blooming around the house, and a well-pruned tree, and everything was well-maintained and cared for.

Shawn was staring through her like he was trying to discern whether or not she had brains and, if so, why she was so bad at using them. It was a gaze she was fondly familiar of receiving from Sandro and Donatello, and therefore she decided everything had gone quite well. But no sooner had they been there for an instant than the barest hint of movement caught Wildcard's attention through the blinds of the house.

The front door creaked open, and Wildcard got a queer shock as a very shy-looking, doe-eyed man slipped out onto the porch. She'd been banking on meeting Ms. Jane and, in retrospect, that had been a hilarious oversight. Ms. Jane worked, and that made her husband the stay-at-home parent.

Peter Parker had an utterly meeklook to him. Like he was a frightened deer who might bound off into the woods at the slightest twitch. His shoulders were pinched, his posture was submissive, his eyelines looked perpetually moist, and his lips were full but pressed flat, like he was already ready to be shouted at and like he'd always respond with meek bobs of the head and whispers of, 'yes sir, no ma'am, yes ma'am.' He looked like that stereotypical sensitive little boy in art class who had a crush on the teacher, and never spoke, whose smiles were always fearful and hopeful, and who looked utterly heartbreaking when on the verge of the tears.

Youthful. He looked _young._ Shawn's father must have been at least thirty years old, or even forty, but his skin was still plump with youth, with what people called 'baby fat' because all the flesh was still pert and rounded and didn't cling tight to the bones. Wild had never had much baby fat, she'd always been angular. This guy had a more youthful curl to his chin and mouth than a kid less than half his age.

He was also deathly silent, checking off a warning signal at the side of Wild's brain. Neither foot made a sound upon his welcome mat, and not a creak emerged from an ancient wooden porch. He didn't call out to them, even as Wild had clearly seen him. Between this and the eerie brown stare he had locked upon her, Wild had to imagine his neighbors found him peculiar. Like the 'adults think he's slow, kids think he makes lampshades of human skin in the basement' type of peculiar.

Technically, for all Wild knew, he did. Not everything could be as simple as it was in cartoons!

"Hi, I'm a juvenile delinquent! Nice to meet you, Shawn's Dad!"

"Dad!" Shawn realized, and spun around and pushed through the gate at the front of the house to get to his parent. His father stepped forward—just one step—across the porch to 'meet' the boy. His gaze never left Wildcard.

 _Hehe, it's okay Mr. Predatory Animal,_ Wildcard tried to reign in on her smile. _Your poor baby sling's safe with me._

"What's up?" father asked son, voice almost lost in the ambiance. "Is your eye okay?" Weiiird thing was he hadn't even looked down.

"Y-yeah," Shawn dabbed at his bruises. "It'll be gone by tomorrow. Some kids ganged upon me. J-jason. Um. This, this girl showed up and drove them off."

"I see," said Peter Parker, voice still as soft and harmless as water droplets. "Thank you, Miss."

Oh? Ooh! Ooh that was for _her._ She was a 'miss!'

"D'aww, no prob," Wild said with a bashful 'it was nothing Great Idol of my childhood' wave of her hand. "Beating up beanpole nerds is a cardinal offense against humanity, so I broke a nose and chased them off with a knife, which was completely sensible, but you might get some weird phone calls from concerned parents in the community. If it makes you feel any better, their kids were totally assholes they deserved it!" Wildcard gave a winning shrug.

Peter Parker gave a small, timid smile. "Thank you," he repeated, earnestly. "I'll talk to the school." He always spoke without moving his mouth or facial expression much, _reeking_ of shy, shy, shy, shy, shy. Like he was delicate and could shatter if you pushed him, and underneath would be only _terror._

Shawn nervously rubbed his hands together. Wildcard recognized a tell. He wasn't just scared she was going to mention seeing him in Jersey. He was scared something else was going to happen, and he had seen it before, and he was equipped with enough moral reasoning skills to know it was bad. He hadn't told his father anything about her maybe being in on their family secret. That meant he was protecting _her._

 _That's sweet._ Wildcard's grin won. _That's very sweet._

"Well I guess I should be on my way," she segued blithely. "Ooh! But, before I forget," she leaned on the picket fence with tremendous echoing sweetness. "If I find Spiderling climbing around the bad side of Jersey one more time, I'm adopting him and we're going to rob banks and eat ice cream and do space diving sans any appropriate safety gear, and pretty much just in general, I will be a _terrible influence._ You were warned."

Shawn cringed. Peter blinked a few times, a smile tickling his lips. "Would you, um," he smiled like a nervous child, breathing out through his nose, "Would you like to come in for snacks, maybe?"

Wildcard shuttered her eyes. "Hmm. Depends! Do you or do you not have carrots and celery?"

"I do, actually."

"With chip dip?"

"Yes."

"Sold!" she agreed, and vaulted the fence.

.

* * *

[Author Note] I'd be concerned for Wild's well being if I didn't know she survived to tell this story


	21. Red and Blue - Part 4

"Squirt," Joker disapproved as he drew a card. "You waltzed into the spider's parlor?"

Wildcard paused in storytelling and peered baffled between her parents. "That's what Sensei said. 'Little fly, you walked knowingly into the spider's parlor.'"

"That is _so weird_ ," MIchelangelo gushed as he laid off cards into their melds. "You and Leo should not think the same things as often as you think them, you are totally nothing alike!"

"Told you, he reminds me of an old friend," Joker just purred. "It's only a poem."

A poem! Hmm. "Calling it now, Mom's going rummy," Wildcard advised her father as she laid off what cards she could.

"I know," Joker sighed, "it's not like he even has any _tells_.Where did you learn to lie like this, Sunshine? It's a thing of beauty."

Michelangelo only giggled conspiratorially as his turn came back around. He laid down all his cards and dusted off his hand victoriously. Wild and Joker both groaned and dropped their cards for a full accounting.

"How is it someone can beat us at cards?" she asked her father in amazement. "I was _sure_ our family had this market cornered!"

Joker just shook his head unknowingly and gave a big shrug. "It's a plesant surprise we don't."

"We must rectify it immediately! He's not leaving till we beat him!"

"Finish the story, Mini!" Mikey insisted as he scooted his chair back and went to check that quiche.

As all sensible people would, Joker adjusted the score behind Mikey's back. By the look of the rummy score paper, the two of them were in an arms race making up ludicrous and numerically impossible scores whenever the other one's back was turned. Wildcard tried to not to start laughing, thrilled to see her father 'playing' with someone! What was Mikey up to?

"Well when last we saw our dashing protagonist," Wildcard narrated, "she had just agreed to a vegetable platter..."

* * *

The Parker homestead was, for lack of a better adjective, _homey._ The walls were built up in textured layers of yellow paint. There were family portraits along the hallway inward, and bright macro photography of flowers.

Peter didn't linger behind threateningly, either, or lock any doors; he entered ahead of them at a brisk pace to get to the kitchen chairs and straighten them. Guests! Guests clearly meant everything had to be tidy! His nervous facade didn't crumble, leading Wildcard to believe it was genuine—

* * *

"—Now be honest," Joker said.

"Pardon?" Wildcard blinked.

"What did you _actually_ foresee?" he requested casually.

Wildcard's eyes widened. She glanced at Michelangelo, and then back to her father.

"Don't do that," Joker scolded. "Never give away intel to a third party, not even intel about what you find to be strange or out-of-character; it can jeopardize a pivotal bluff. Come on, Squirt, you know this, what's with your body language? Whether someone is telling you to hand over the truth, the briefcase of money, or the cure to the zombie plague, either say 'no thank you,' or shrug like it's all the same to you, and jump right in. The only time you should be shooting speechless looks back and forward is when you're intentionally trying to play up an act."

Wildcard slumped in disbelief onto her elbows on the table, and gestured to Michelangelo with both hands.

Mikey's brows were peaked curiously, and he was blinking curiously between them both. He settled on Joker, surprisingly, and asked, "That's the kind of stuff you teach her?"

"She's training to be _a ninja,_ right?" Joker asked almost rhetorically. "A ninja affiliated with four older, more experienced, adult ninja?"

Wildcard sat back in her seat, contemplating the fact that her father had just told her to casually explain her second-largest life-long secret to Michelangelo. Her father was the one who'd exploded on her for daring to tell _Sandro_ anything!

Michelangelo looked worried and hesitant, as if he was about to say 'oh you really don't have to tell me anything.'

"You _trust_ him, don't you?" Joker asked with a heavy-lidded drawl. Like this was a _test._

Wildcard grimaced, trying to decide what the right answer was. She glanced at the rummy score card, and then took in a deep breath. "Well maybe it would be more accurate to call Peter Parker _skittish_ instead of _shy._ Because—"

* * *

—There were a hilarious number of futures in which she died. Like, extremely abruptly, too. Faster then you could snap your fingers. Just, pop: dead. All it would take for her to off herself was one quick, ambiguous movement towards Shawn, like if she tried to throw another companionable hug around him without signaling her intentions. There wasn't even a split second nestled in there for her to try and react, _nothing._ She'd land on the floor, blood spurting wildly over walls and upholstery, staring up at her own severed arm, and the Superhero who'd just torn it clear off her body.

But honestly, how could anyone hold that against him? She was armed, she was around his kid, and she knew he was Spider-Man. It was super easy to imagine Raphael might have done a similar thing if he'd been the one to catch Sandro topside playing with her. Like if they'd been playing at throwing-knife deflection? Oh yeah. Big Red would have signaled his arrival by splattering her. So this, by comparison, was a very generous reception!

"Have a seat," her host said, giving a hilariously skittish person's best 'inviting smile' before scurrying over to the refrigerator.

Shawn lingered in the hallway, staring at the kitchen table, still wringing his hands. Wildcard knew what she was looking at. She knew this meant Shawn dad's had killed someone in front of him before, and that it had left a very lasting impression on him. She snickered at his face and ribbed him with her elbow, because doing so was safe as long as her hands didn't leave her hoodie pockets. "Hey if you think this is awkward, think how fun it's going to be introducing your first girlfriend!"

"What!?" Shawn squawked, coming back to the present with a flounder and a blush. "That's not-!"

"Or boyfriend? Whatever floats your boat, yo! Sandro's off limits, though, he's my damsel."

"Who the heck _is_ this Sandro person!?" Shawn blurted.

"My only friend but you, weren't you paying attention the last two times you asked me?"

"I'm not your friend!" Shawn shouted in her face.

"No but you will be, I guarantee! Wow it's like de sha vu around here, did someone accidentally print double of the same page?"

"You-just-this-!? This is not the time to not make sense!" Shawn finally articulated. "D-do you have any idea what-"

"Pfft, you worry too much, Sling, ooh, are those oranges?" she plopped into a seat at the kitchen table and stole an orange. Shawn followed her in, clearly more angry at her than afraid. He slapped his hands down on the table like he was trying to startle some sense into her, and leaned over to demand:

"Who are _you_?"

"I already answered that, too! Wait, are you like Drew Barrymore's character from Fifty First Dates? Do you have short term memory loss?!"

"No!" Shawn was getting more and more loud, more and more angry, and more and more hilariously adorable. He'd clearly never vented on anyone before in his life and was an utter amateur at it, and she wanted to pinch his cheeks and hug him to death and die laughing as she did so. "No, I don't have short term memory loss, you're the one being stupid and dense on purpose, and when you're meeting someone for the very first time, that's extremely impolite, so I don't know why you think I should just magically like you and want to be your friend!"

"Oh my gaawwwd," she complained, "you're holding a book on _String Theory,_ nerd, you are supposed to be able to put two-and-two together! Are you going to make me spell it out for you? I have spoonfed you everything!"

"You haven't said anything at all! Cut the crap!"

"Point me to the nearest feces!"

"STOP IT! You called yourself a ninja, you stalked me in Jersey, you keep name-dropping someone like a mafia kid would, you attacked people to get to me; who _are_ you!?"

She gave a tremendous roll of her eyes, scoffed, and sat back and peeled her orange with a pocketknife. "False, false, false, false, and false."

"None of that was false!"

"One: You are the one who called me a ninja. You called me a Foot Ninja and I was horrified and mentioned Nickelodeon, which should have been a clue, Two: I _live_ in Jersey, you _don't,_ and when a random new interesting person showed up on the rooftops, I obviously wanted to meet this kindred spirit and introduced myself; Three: the person I name-dropped, I also told you was a _mutant,_ and you obviously didn't put One and Three together; Four and Five: I didn't know where you live, you bailed on me last Saturday after I _told_ you where I'd be hanging, so I thought I'd check around local middle schools for you and see if you were okay; I followed some bratty kids who were after a nerd, found you, overheard them insinuate that either your sexual orientation or gender-identity were atypical as they vowed to do terrible things to you; I heroically rescued you, and then—after yelling at me for helping you because you're apparently a martyr who has to handle all these things completely alone—you _led_ me here."

Shawn stared at her.

Wildcard took one half an orange peel, popped the orange slices back in it, and tossed it across the table to him. "Have some citrus, Sling, it's good for the immune system!"

"So why Queens?" asked a voice directly from behind Wildcard, and she nearly jumped out of her skin and turned to the sight of Peter Parker laying down that beautiful vegetable platter.

"Pardon?" she asked.

"If you met Shawn in Jersey," Peter Parker asked in that cute, quiet, quiet voice, "and if you live in Jersey, why did you come looking at schools in Queens?"

Wildcard squinted at him. "Do you have no eye teeth?" she wondered.

Peter Parker blinked at her several times in rapid succession, a smile curling hesitantly at the corners of his mouth. Then he slowly dropped his jaw, and two long, beautiful, wickedly curved and pointed fangs slipped down from his hard palette and came to rest exactly where fangs ought to rest.

"Oh sweet _Splinter,_ " she gushed, "That's so _cool,_ " she looked back to Shawn, who was sitting in his chair and nervously wringing his hands again, eyes flicking up and down. "Can _you_ do that!?"

Shawn's eyes widened slightly and he slumped forward a little, staring through her in disbelief that she could be excited at a time like this.

"That's _so awesome,_ " she looked back to Peter Parker. "I read that that's a basal trait in spiders! The fangs swiveling back and forward instead of from the sides? I ended up reading a lot about spiders because I'm building a spider robot, even if technically it's a hexapod, but I'm pretty sure it still counts because it _totally looks like a spider._ "

Fangs folded non-threateningly back away. "H-hexapods really do look like spiders," he agreed nerdily, dark eyes searching her. "You didn't answer the question, though."

"Oh, that," she explained, "your wife used to teach me Aikido, she has business cards and they put her all over the Hudson River Delta area. Everywhere but Queens, which makes sense given that she is using an alias. 'Ms. Jane' right? So I made an educated guess that turned out to be right."

"Y-you know my mom?" Shawn asked nervously.

"The bigger question!" Wild turned to Shawn, "Is how the heck my sensei knows her, because it's just occurred to me a secret acquaintanceship with her would finally explain why he mysteriously knew I have an aversion to joint locks and pins!"

"What!? Why is it strange for two martial arts instructors to know one another!?"

"Uh, because my sensei is a giant mutant turtle, duh," she rolled her eyes. "It's not like he gets to socialize with normal people much. Or at all. Come on, Shawn, Keep up!"

Shawn straightened. This was the first moment in which he looked shocked in a 'nervously excited' way, like he'd realized something _good_ might be happening. "Who... _What_ is Sandro?"

"Old enough to babysit you, so don't get any ideas!" Wildcard asserted. "But since you're only two years apart, and neither of you have any friends—except me—I'm going to have to assume the only sane and rational explanation for this state of affairs is _not_ that your parents want you both to be lonely and miserable growing up, but instead that neither set of parents has told the other that they have children yet, because Safety. Woops? Over-protectiveness for the win? Regardless, that brings me to the point of my visit today!"

She spun back to Peter Parker. Peter Parker blinked rapidly at her.

"There's no possible way Raphael didn't invite you to our massive Hamato Christmas Party. I know, you can't play dumb! So now that you know he and April have a kid, you should drop whatever you were going to do and come! Because Sandro and I and Donatello will love your poor baby Sling to death and teach him how to play Dance Dance Revolution and show him our robot spider and the dojo and all Sandro's pet snakes. Wait, Shawn _is_ a boy, right? He never answered my question. Eh, doesn't matter, he can correct me if he'd prefer another pronoun. Goodness knows sometimes I do! Also I'm going to play a prank and it's going to be amaze-balls if you know anything about me. Which you don't, but your kid would have a great time, and you'd be an asshole if you denied him that, so ha! Guilt trap! Also this will help counteract the terrible influence I will end up being on your son by introducing him to Sandro, who is an excellent influence on anyone. Whelp, that about covers it. My piece is said," she dusted off her hands. "Ooh, carrots!"


	22. Red and Blue and Green and Orange

Michelangelo was slumped over their kitchen table, unable to keep his rummy hand straight, and cracking up laughing. Dad would have been using that to win, but he presently had his chin propped up on one hand and was watching her with a gleaming twinkle in his eye somewhere between the polar extremes of 1) 'We are moving to Hawaii and you are grounded until you're thirty' and 2) 'The vegetable platter, hEhEHeHehE, that's my girl!'

"In all fairness," Wildcard gave a winning shrug, "I knew from the start he was going to react to any mention of the turtles, so it was less a death trap, and more of a game on how to get Shawn pumped for the idea. I was like... ninety-five percent sure I wouldn't end up that evening's entree."

"You based this assumption on his reputation as a decent human being—as features in _cartoons_ ," Joker admonished in a gentle but ominous growl, as Mikey finished off those laughs with snickers. "Cartoons which depict him as a fun-loving, goofball, wisecracking teenager. Which you had just seen was erroneous."

"No, I pretty much based it off the fact that Raphael and April like him and his wife," she corrected.

"They also like me," Joker delivered in monotone.

"Okay, yup," Wild sucked in a breath, "Point ceded. I acted on someone else's character judgement. On the supposition they knew everything there was to know about the skeletons in their friend's closet."

"When both families weren't even talking about each other's children yet."

"Right," Wild rubbed guiltily at the back of her neck. "But, Dad, I _could_ tell what I needed to do, and I _could_ tell exactly what would set him off. His objective was the same as yours or anyone else's would have been: He wanted his baby safe."

"Whom you'd put at risk just by _knowing about,_ " Joker intoned.

Wild wilted back a little into her seat, and dropped her hand into her lap. "You don't get it," she said. "You've never wanted friends. You've never been lonely."

Her father's eyes narrowed a little, and she almost thought she saw a wince somewhere back there in the shape of them, but then it was gone. He didn't say anything.

Mikey reminded them both he was sitting right there (though how they could forget someone so enormous and colorful, who could say?) by winning the rummy hand. "Mini," he scolded as he laid off his final card, "That was _mean_."

She didn't say anything. Then her eyes widened. She looked at Mikey, and she looked at Joker, who perked up at her expression. Wild speant a moment being surprised, and then gave a big, knowing grin and looked away and started whistling. Mikey was confused and his gaze shifted between them.

"What's-?" he asked, only to be interrupted by a crack as the chair he was sitting on gave up the ghost, all four legs broke, and it collapsed to the floor.

Wildcard burst out whooping like a hyena with laughter. "AHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

Dad at least affected to be surprised, but leaned over a very startled turtle with heavy-lidded eyes. He said, "I'm not sure whether to blame Ikea's engineering team or your body mass index."

Michelangelo colored up burgundy, or at least as far red as anyone who was normally sort of turquoise green could color, and scrambled to his elbows atop the table. "You could tell what was going to happen," he realized, looking at Wild. "When you said you knew what to say to Spider-Man, when you said 'there were futures in which you died' —?"

"She can see a very short distance into the future," Dad explained conversationally; Wildcard had contracted hiccoughs. "Somewhere between sixty seconds or five minutes, or some such. It's why she's a secret."

Michelangelo's brow furrowed and he looked Joker's way. "What good is sixty seconds?"

"Enough to know a chair is going to break," Joker looked back to her. "Enough to move out of a sniper's scope. Enough to know whether to raise or fold in a poker match. Enough to know when to pull a trigger. Enough to know if a room is trapped. Enough to know whether you'd be able to win a fast knife fight, or escape a hostage situation. Enough to unmask a disguise without actually ever unmasking it. Enough to know if the next thing you say is going to get you killed. But," he tossed his hand down, grabbed up the score paper, and started tabulating points, "it didn't tell her how that meeting would end."

"That's not _true_ ," Wild snickered, trying to swallow those hiccoughs. "If I _die_ it makes a really, really big empty spot! It's _easy_ to focus on what's left!"

"You had no idea how that meeting was going to turn out. It could have resulted in your death, in dangerous phone calls to outsiders, in you webbed to a building and left for the police; etc etc etc."

"I am an excellent judge of character," Wildcard disagreed.

Joker dropped the score pad with a heavy thud.

Wildcard went quiet, and sulked, throwing her cards down so they could be scored. The hiccoughs tried to ruin her broody expression, but she successfully ate them and they died.

After a long silence, her father said, "You are supposed to be _invisible._ Certain people, _nosy people,_ people with the right networks; theyneed to handled one of three ways: They need to be avoided, they need to be tricked, or they need to be trusted. The more people you put in category three, and the less you know about those people, the more you risk losing _everyone_ _else_ you've put in there by exposing them and yourself to danger. You are only fourteen years old. You can handle yourself with everyday thugs, but you stand no chance against the underworld of bounty hunters, billionaires, and assassins waiting on the upper tier. They have no idea we _survived._ They have no idea they ought to be looking for you. And somehow nothing I say can compel you to play things safe until you're older."

"Peter Parker is borderline autistic," she gushed out in anger, not lifting her head, "because his _Spider Sense_ overwhelms him the same way my foresight overwhelms me. Acting weird and skittish doesn't make him an _animal,_ it just makes it hard for him to meet new people!His son's lonely, and I could fix it, and it was _easy_ , like it was _criminal_ not to help, and I played the conversation fine, but you don't believe me so what am I supposed to say to defend myself?!"

"You consider that to have been 'playing the conversation?' No. What you did with Tony Stark was a good play. This was hysteric and sloppy."

"No, I picked something familiar, I _mimicked someone I know he knows_ to set up expectations!" she argued at the top of her voice.

"Who? What do you actually know about Peter Parker?"

Wildcard looked up angrily, gaze sharpened, pulse elevated, ready to fight, ready to bite and tear and resist by any means necessary.

"Deadpool," Mikey realized aloud, startling her out of a viperous curl. "She mimicked _Deadpool_. His Twitter account has selfies of himself with Spider-Man. Like the 'taken while falling towards an active-volcano' 'being chased by a dinosaur' or 'there's a nuclear bomb going off in the background' sort of selfies."

Joker raised both brows and thought about that for a moment. "Oh." He sat back, calculating possibilities. "Well, now. That's just _brilliant_."

Wild's insides felt blank as paper, blank as marble. She stared at Michelangelo, and then at the table. Everything felt blank. Throbbing, cold, agitating, and blank. She got up, and pushed her chair away. "I-I need to..." she tried to articulate, turning away.

"Squirt-?"

 _Sandro sandro sandro._ "I need a minute," she whispered, copying Yin as she fled towards the stairs, and mounted them as fast as she could, trying to reach the relative isolation of her bedroom.

Nobody stopped her.

* * *

Watching her go, a cringing Joker rose slowly to her feet. He winced when her door slammed, and stood there with his gaze fixed on the ceiling between himself and her. He sucked in a long, slow breath, and then muttered 'Shit' and leaned on the back of his chair.

"It's... it's okay."

Joker looked disbelievingly towards Michelangelo.

"Messing up," Mikey clarified, eyes round and sympathetic. "It's okay." He glanced towards the stairs. "But you come down on her _hard_ , yo. Real hard."

"I _have_ to," Joker disagreed, kneading the chair back. "She won't take anything else seriously; she won't think about her own safety. She won't think about anything bigger than the moment. Sunshine, I've watched that child dive headfirst into a gun fight. For no reason. Just because she wanted to see if she could win."

"... Did she?"

Joker leaned most of his weight back at the chair back and smiled thinly. Blue eyes widened at him, appreciative of what it meant. "That's half the problem," Joker said. "People talk about children who can win gun fights."

Michelangelo remained quiet, now visibly thinking, gaze shifting back and forth. He looked towards the stairs. "You need help," he realized.

"I need help," Joker agreed immediately.

Mikey gnawed on the edge of his beak.

Joker went to make sure the quiche didn't burn.

"Hey, uh... I know you've raised her a certain way," Mikey began to suggest. "And this is just a guess, based on some side stuff I ready while looking up what Robyn was going through. Maybe something about the way you break down safety feels wrong to Mini, like it's from a part of the past she didn't like, and she's scared of falling back there. I dunno. Leo already put her through the ringer, and she didn't fight back at all. She got her tush into Hashi like the Devil was after her. And Leo, he didn't just yell at her for waving a knife around, I'm pretty sure he talked to her about it being dangerous, and about revealing secure stuff like Sandro's identity, so it was kinda the same _sort_ of lecture, only... different?"

"Maybe that's it," Joker realized, staring through memories. "Maybe she needs the moral component embedded in it anymore, for it to make sense. I can't do that bit very well. If you didn't have a very strong moral compass, and you struggled to tell right from wrong, but you _wanted_ to head in one specific direction... Wouldn't it feel reassuring to hear all the right indicators and vocal inflections indicating the teacher acknowledged and cared about morality?"

"Dude, sometimes you even _talk_ like Leo."

"Were there not rules about 'dude' and 'yo?'"

"Woops! Uh. Heh. Do you want me to talk to her, maybe?"

Joker turned to him. "Would you?" he hoped.

"Yes! As long as it's not weird! I'm on the job! Trust me, there will be heartwarming hugging by the end of the hour, I'm a professional!"

Joker couldn't help but laugh slightly as an orange turtle hurried his enormous shell up a very tight spiral staircase.


	23. Christmas - Part 1

The Hamato family Christmas parties were usually lavish affairs. Christmas was the one time of year, every year, when Sandro could feel completely surrounded by people. From far and wide, from across the world, from off planet, and sometimes even from _outside the dimension_ , family friends flocked to the Hamato family doorsteps, all to have a massive dinner together and catch up on each other's lives.

Now, because the residence in question had insufficient rooms for housing so many guests, arrangements usually had to be made. Some people were 'normal' and could rent hotels, provided everything was done discretely and carefully (and in a hotel which Donatello had bugged to help protect it against Foot infiltration). Others people end up sheltering in an old, dry, seldom-used space in the sewers of New York City, which also belonged to the Hamatos and which had its own automated defense system. Still others would end up camping on the living room floor on futons through the evening.

Traveling over the Christmas holiday was usually expensive, and some people had other engagements, so not everyone arrived or left on the same day. For the most part, though, the chunk of time between December 24th and January 1st was an elixir against the isolation which permeated most other parts of the turtles' lives. Donatello and Leonardo planned it out to an obsessive level of detail. Raphael and Michelangelo started impulse-buying fantastic decorations and fixing up the house. Sandro helped with everything. Their tree was always lush, gigantic, and coated foot to top in ornaments; wreathes and stockings hung from the walls; angels, and paper cranes and ornamental snowmen adorned every end table. The turtles—young and old—positively adored Christmas.

Leo was certainly no exception. Christmas was one of those rare times where his skills in logistics and planning were needed outside a combat scenario, and he took tremendous pride in ensuring everything was perfect and that his household was positively gorgeous betimes his guests began to arrive. The task list he handled himself was extensive:

Food needed to be selected that accounted for everyone's different diets and allergies, portions needed to be calculated, bulk quantities of ingredients needed to be ordered, and often (owed to how frequently the turtles ended up roughhousing at their own kitchen table) fresh cook and dishware needed to be purchased. Budgets needed to be made. Rooms needed to be booked, gifts needed to be carefully selected, tabulated, compared against the budget, and ordered, tremendous quantities of festive products, ornaments, and decorative lights needed to be checked and often replaced; and an incredible number of linens needed to be aired out and prepared ahead of time for the people who would be sleeping in them.

Uncle Leonardo had a hand in all these things, which meant he was now talking more than usual, involved more than usual, and lingering by everyone's elbow to figure out what they needed, whether there was any of that in storage, who might already need or have recently purchased something similar, and what still needed to be ordered when to compensate.

But as the days went by, everyone began to notice Hamato Leonardo appeared appeared to be looking forward to Christmas with the same degree of anticipation normal people looked forward to root canals. He was so grim-faced and reticent. He looked almost ill.

Sandro seemed to be the only person clued in to the obvious: This was the Hamato Family Christmas Party, Leonardo was the Head of Household, and presently their Miniature Chaos Incarnate was invited to attend. If someone had to randomly guess the one day of the year when Wildcard could manage to whip up a prank that well-and-truly embarrassed her sensei, that blew him out of the water and got him back for all the times he'd ever gotten the best of her, this would be it. Leo was the face of the Christmas party, and she could _annihilate_ that face with any number of hilarious antics. Her options were unlimited. Heck, you didn't even have to factor in that Usagi would be coming.

But if you did, oh, _well then,_ it was easy to imagine Wildcard showing up in a bright pink Easter bunny outfit and blathering, 'I messed up my Christian-Pagan holidays again, lol! Oh hey look, we're twins, he must have forgotten, too! Look!' right in front of someone (Usagi) who was _a rabbit spirit._

Poor Uncle Leo. He looked miserably _resigned_ to it all.

* * *

Donatello was the next to home in on the realization Wildcard might be up to something. It wasn't like she was _concealing_ her diabolical nature or anything. Weeks leading up to Christmas, she was already breaking out into maniiacal giggles in her tea at lunch time, and goodness only knew what the heck was going through her head.

Donnie started hounding her steps, chastising her in proactively, suspiciously warning her against all the things she was _absolutely not allowed to do_ which would ruin Christmas for everyone. Wild played innocent at first. Sandro snapped a picture of her face while maniacal-giggling, and used an online meme-generator to caption it with the word, 'Soon.' He showed it to her. She cracked up laughing, Donatello scolded, and Wild waved her arms rapidly to absolve herself.

"I'm only after one man this Christmas!" she hinted with a wink.

Donnie wasn't a genius for nothing. As soon as he realized neither he nor Sandro's parents would be the target, he stopped bothering Wildcard at all, didn't warn anyone, and turned a blind eye to when she started conspiring with Michelangelo. Sandro wasn't sure he wanted to know what shennanigans might be afoot in the near future, and plus he liked watching her and Mikey spend time together. He felt a little bad for Uncle Leo, whose only sin was in valuing things his brothers didn't value, like presentation and good face. Iit didn't seem exactly right to declare Open Season on him _all year long_ just because other people felt these things were 'boring.'

But, then again, Mikey and Don seemed to prank Raphael a lot for how little Raphael was around, and the brothers definitely pounced on Mikey when a good opportunity rolled around. Heck, only Donnie himself seemed to avoid coalitions of brothers ganging up on him in the pranking roulette. Probably because he fixed everything for them. And cooked half the food. And had raised Sandro. And hadn't moved out to go be professor of a mutant college somewhere, abandoning them all. Ya know, that kind of thing.

Or maybe Donnie was just _great_ at never doing the part of a prank that would make blame fall on _him._ There was also still the possibility that Uncle Don had lingering issues with Uncle Leo that hadn't been ironed out yet, and that he was unusually fixated on causing Leo distress. Hmm. Well, anyway-

"Hey," Sandro mentioned to Wildcard. "Have we _talked_ yet today?"

"I don't think so," she concluded with a startled grimace, dropping her pen. "I asked you to pass me a water bottle during practice, but then I've had some seriously tough Chemistry homework I need to get out of the way, and you've been getting the house ready with your family."

He started laughing. "The more normal it is to have you around, the _less_ we spend every second together."

She raised a hand in agreement and they knocked elbows and hi-fived. "Psychology, bro! It's a thing!"

* * *

It was the Tuesday before Christmas when the package arrived, and plenty of creatures were stirring, probably including mice!

By Decree of Sandro and Wildcard, who were being proactive so as not to get dragged around by well-meaning parents, Tuesdays and Saturdays were rest days. Rest days meant Wild _did not_ go to the Turtle Homestead, not even for Ninjitsu or school lessons (Sensei's permission in this whole scheme had been vital, naturally). Saturdays were days for Sandro's parents to chillax without any loud maniacs around and, hopefully in the near future, spend time with Sandro. Tuesdays were usually Joker's day off work at the bar, giving Wildcard and Joker back time they'd sort of lost when she'd gotten a new friend and he'd gotten himself employed.

Wild was practicing her Dance Dance vs. Sandro on the interwebs when she had to call their gaming time short, because,

"Squirt! There's a large cardboard box sitting outside with your name on it! It's not a missile launcher, by any chance, is it?"

"It's arrived!" Wildcard cackled befitting a holiday two months previous, darting away from a song Sandro was now going to beat her at and tease her with. "It's arrriiiivvveeed!" She dove onto he porch, which (thanks to the awning) was _not_ covered in twelve inches of snow, and she grabbed hold of the cardboard box and heaved it inside. It weighed more than she expected, which was still not anywhere near enough to weigh her down.

She brought it inside, tore it apart with a ubiqitous kinfe, and grinned down at the ingredients within.

Joker came up and gave a low whistle. "That's purdy," he admitted. "You're really going to go through with it?"

"I must," she said, rubbing her hands together like a proper villain. "It's the only way! Nothing else would be quite so perfect!"

"Well have at it kiddo, it's going to take you two or three hours just to get familiar with how any of it works."

"Oh yeah," she agreed, reaching in. " _Definitely._ It needs to be perfect from top to bottom, not like I just slapped it all together at the last second. This right here, this will be some of my finest work!"

* * *

That night was mighty chilly.

The wind blew stiff across the city, and hurried up faster in the tight spaces between streets, chasing people to move faster than they usually would. The snow had come down four inches yesterday but a blizzard was rolling in that evening that might lay down anywhere from eight to ten inches on top of that.

In this kind of weather, cold just moved around you like a liquid substance, sinking in to whatever you were wearing and permeating it. Snow plows were loading up with salt and ready. Everyone had a shovel waiting near their door for morning, in case they needed to dig their way to a car, bus, or taxi. Everyone with half an ounce of sense in their hands was bundled up on a couch that evening, drinking cocoa and blasting the heat.

Kinpōge, lacking for that aforementioned ounce, climbed up onto the arcade roof. She was wearing catsuit, gloves, banana, and scarf, with two layers of insulation on underneath. She pulled her hood down hard, tugged up her turtleneck, and tightened her scarf.

"Man I need to put on some more pounds," she snickered to herself.

She found the tiny alcove behind the neon letters with all the spikes of rebar thrust across it, and shimmied her way down into a hole that would never have fit a full grown man, getting herself out of the wind. She reclined lazily down there on a bit of rusted steel down there, polishing up some of her knives and making sure everything was properly sharpened. Snowflakes made it difficult.

A shape perched overhead and blotted out the stars, as darkness found the hole via magical means known only to the darkness, hunkered down over it, and reached down.

Kinpōge took hold of a leather-gloved hand and climbed out of her little alcove and into the silhouette of a dark armored bird.

"Ohayō gozaimasu, Sensei!" she greeted quietly beside him, using 'good morning' because the turtles usually did, regardless of time. "Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!"

"'Yoroshiku?'" her protective wind barrier inquired, feeling along her night suit and gloves as if displeased with something. "Hmm. I did not teach you this word."

"It fits. Right?"

"It is unusually polite of you," he explained. "Your vowels are sliding. I can tell from your pitch accent that you have been perusing Kyoto-Ben podcasts. You will sound like you are saying 'chopsticks' when you mean 'bridge' and 'bridge' when you mean 'chopsticks.' Practice your different 'o's for a moment."

"Kinpoooou-ge. Yoroshiku. Oha-yooou. O-negai." A cloth weight dropped over top of her shoulders and she blinked, surprised to find faux fur in her face. Apparently she now owned a coat. "I'm okay," she insisted, looking at it's black and white camouflage pattern. Huh.

"Kaze o hikanaide kudasai. If your toes become chilled, you will inform me at the first available opportunity. This is agreed upon?"

"Hai, Sensei. Atatakai. Watashi wa atataki desu, atataki mara."

"Betsu no ichininshō o oshienakereba naranai..." he muttered to himself.

Wild snaked along in her mentor's shadow and buttoned up her new jacket.

"Snow plays tricks on the eyes," he exposited. "It can reveal much, it can hide much, and it changes the mindset of those working through it."

He didn't say anything at all about the Christmas Party. Not to inquire; not to forbid; not to warn.

Wildcard smiled wide.

 _Soon._

 _._

* * *

Translations and Notes:

"Ohayō gozaimasu, Sensei! Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!" ~ "Good morning Sensei! Please teach (and guide) me!" Although these are standard phrases, they are only standard for one's first meeting, they are in polite form, and there are some subtleties to yoroshiku which imply respect for a senior persons's wisdom, making it a sweet thing for Wildcard to greet her mentor with.

"Kyoto-Ben." ~ Did you imagine Leonardo was chastising Wildcard for sounding like a country hick? He is actually discouraging her from mimicking a dialect which is perceived as feminine elegant and feminine ;)

"Bridge" and "chopsticks" are both transliterated as "hashi."

"Kaze o hikanaide kudasai." ~ "Don't you dare catch a cold."

"Hai, Sensei. Atatakai. Watashi wa atatakai desu, atatakai mara." ~ "Yes Sensei! (I feel) warm. I'm warm, and warming up." (As an elementary speaker, her Japanese is still single words, phrases, or has very unnatural grammar; she is also playing around with what is likely a new word for her, 'atatakai,' trying to fit it with other words she's learned.)

"Betsu no ichininshō o oshienakereba naranai..." ~ "We must teach you a personal pronoun other than 'Watashi.'"

.

* * *

[Author's Note]

Soon.

:3

If you'd like to support me with donations, head over to Patre-on-dot-com!  
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Also vote for Fanfiction-dot-net to get with the times and allow links in Author notes, how are we supposed to link awesome art to you guys otherwise!? This silly website literally censors names of other platforms out, and I sometimes come back to my text and find out whole nouns are missing because my characters wanted to talk about Amazon or something equally as innocent as that.

Speaking of which, if you ever see something glaringly missing, don't be afraid to PM me or include it in a review, and I will try to fix it with duct tape and paper clips. It really grinds my gears that fanfiction-dot-net SILENTLY (without telling me during the upload!) randomly deletes symbols/nouns/things from the text. GRR. If I want to write a story with motherbleepin smiley faces and music notes in the text, that should be up to me!


	24. Christmas - Part 2

It was the Eve of Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve's Eve.

Staring out across the dimly lit Hamato household, with its flickering candles, Wildcard felt some soft, glowing kind of pleasure.

Wildcard had lived through plenty of Christmases, and they'd always been a nice family holiday, but one had to factor in that Wild had only ever _had_ one family member, and that she spent plenty of time with him all weeks of the year. No matter how many presents they crammed under the tree, those presents were still only for two people. And while the warehouses they'd lived in had been able to fit some extremely enormous trees, they'd never had a cache of ornaments to doll it up with that went back all the way to anybody's childhood. Heck, they'd been lucky if they'd had the ornaments from last year.

This was very different.

The turtles had arts and crafts from every year of Sandro's childhood all over that tree, and some that had been around even longer—from their own childhoods. Stockings, six of them, stood out on a makeshift mantelpiece over the jute box, each one embroidered with names and all kinds of adorable Christmas motifs like rocking horses, sleighs, trees, snowmen, and reindeer. They were ordered by seniority: April, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, Sandro. Around them, on the counter tops, stood little ceramic _Precious Moments_ figurines, some of which had been edited to wear tiny shells, depicting quintessential winter moments. If one peeked in the shrine, Master Splinter's portrait was up on the butsudan, usually with incense lit. Fresh poinsettias were pouring out of every nook and cranny of the homestead. Live wreathes hung up on the walls, some of which Wild had watched Raphael, Sandro and Michelangelo put together by hand.

Tomorrow would mark the start of the big Christmas Party. The most important days were Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Years. This room would be _filled_ with people, people whom Wildcard had never met, all of whom were connected to Sandro, Michelangelo, Leonardo, old Master Splinter, and the rest of the turtles. She was gonna get to participate in this party, in this _family._ So was her Dad, and that was the crazier bit!

It still wasn't her home, exactly. That somehow kept coming back to her like a boomerang. She'd throw it away, and it'd come back and whack her again, and leave her feeling a little insecure, a little hollow. Still, it was close. She wished she'd be spending the night, but, hey, she'd be here bright and early tomorrow! (Or dark and early? Meh, when you were nocturnal, sometimes you just had to steal normal people's Morning Vocab and re-purpose it for your own lifestyle!) And there was the added fact that she needed to set up her 'prank' and deliver it _just perfectly!_

She slipped on her new black and white splotched coat (Sandro had told her she'd looked like a cow, not like a camouflaged assassin, heehee!), and she got her backpack on one strap at a time.

Michelangelo hurried out of the rear room, holding pins and a nail clasped in his beak and carrying something over his arm. Wildcard glanced over at him in surprise. He hopped up to the mantelpiece, and there, on the far end, in the most junior position, he lifted up a brand new stocking adorned in poinsettia patterns, and he pegged it into place with that nail. He backed up, and she saw 'Kinpoge' sewn down the side.

Ba-dump went Wildcard's heart, swelling by ten sizes that day.

Michelangelo looked back at her and winked. "Gee, I dunno how this got here, it must have been Leo, eh?"

She darted across the living room and pounced the world's most lovable turtle, and Mikey caught her and heaved her up and spun her around and gave her a big hug.

"The prank good to go?" he whispered.

She gave a mute thumb's up, too overcome with Tremendous Love For Orange to say anything at that moment.

He squeezed her tight. "Love ya Mini," he promised, and gave her temple a big smooch.

* * *

Christmas Eve!

Guests were arriving left, right and center. It seemed no sooner had Sandro fetched a drink, put out a platter of shrimp, or helped an uncle pull something out of the oven and put something else in, than another set of faces had shown up at their door!

Employed in keeping the house running, Sandro hadn't yet gotten enough time to figure out just who was there, who wasn't, and who'd shown up this year who hadn't been able to show up in awhile. It seemed like one second he'd turned around to only Grandpa and Robyn being present, and the next their atrium, living room, dining room, kitchen, and dojo were flooded with people who were all eagerly greeting one another, hugging, striking up conversations for the first time in a year, and asking after friends, children, and distant relations.

Raphael had taken over the job of greeting everyone who entered, albeit much more casually than the Master of the House would have handled things. When he got distracted talking to Casey, Mikey switched off with him.

And Leo? Eh. Maybe somebody needed to go over and shake poor Uncle Leo, or... give him a pep talk. He'd ended up ceding the job of welcoming his guests almost immediately, and was roaming the gathering in a state of nervous agitation. The more guests arrived, the more crowded the room grew, and the more visibly distressed Uncle Leo became. When Sandro glanced over at him, he was pretty sure Leo looked _ill._ Like slightly-more-green-than-usual styled ill. When people greeted them, he smiled at them like smiling caused him pain, and kept his illustrious and elegant greetings clipped down to quick, 'it's nice to see you.' He lingered at a few conversations, but looked incredibly twitchy. Oh boy.

"Here," Donatello interrupted Sandro's thoughts, handing him three wine bottles. "Get these over beside the punch bowl so guests can start helping themselves."

"Got it!"

* * *

"I don't suppose you've seen my apprentice?" Leonardo asked Raphael.

"Eh? No, but her Dad showed up about fifteen minutes ago and asked if we'd 'mind' if he mixed a few drinks."

"We told him he's not supposed to work at a party he was invited to," Case grinned, "but we ain't complaining about the booze. Look at this!" he showed Leonardo a cup.

"Delightful," Leo uttered with zero delight whatsoever.

"I figured she was already here by then?" Raph took a sip of his drink. "She's always fuckin' here, first second she can be!"

"That is true," Leo agreed tightly. "I'm just not certain where, at present."

Raphael laughed at him. "Yo, lighten up, Leo! Have some saké, for Christ's sake! Kid's'll be kids, she probably with Shadow, making faces at Sandro while he's tryin' ta talk ta people!

Leonardo gave a martyred sigh.

* * *

"You two need to get out there and have some fun," April laughed, coming into the kitchen with a big grin and tickling Donatello to stop him from checking in on the green beans for the thousandth time. "It's a party and you are going to work straight through it!"

"Well the food doesn't prepare itself!" Donatello chastized back in exasperation.

"Sandro hasn't even gotten to see anybody yet," Robyn scolded, coming in behind her sister. "Come on, me and Dad can handle the food for awhile, you need some margaritas in you!"

"Oh, Sandro," Donatello realized. "She's right, you should be having f— _margaritas?_ We don't have mixed drinks."

"We do now!" Robyn snickered, grabbing his arm and pulling him off to obtain one.

"I'll hold down the fort!" April called. "Send me Honeycutt if you find him, he's looking for something he can do to help!"

* * *

"Pardon me," Leonardo butted very gently into a natural lull in the conversation nearest the punch bowl, while Robyn and a number of super-heroic guests were just finishing laughing. "Have you by chance seen my apprentice?" he asked her.

"Not yet," Robyn thought back. "She must be around here somewhere, I don't imagine she'd be _late..._ "

"That's what I was thinking," Leo agreed almost gloomily.

"Well she's definitely not babysitting for anyone, I can tell you that," Robyn recalled slyly. "Doesn't she usually stick to Sandro like glue?"

"Usually," Leo agreed glumly.

"Is something wrong?" he was asked.

"Oh no. Par for the course," Leo responded. "Do excuse me." He wove out of the conversation again.

* * *

Sandro had found Shadow in all the hubbub, and the two of them were trading friendly insults and shoves.

"Heh!" he gave her a one-armed hug and a gentle noogie. "Have you seen Wild?"

"Yeah she slipped in the second Mikey took up door duty. Is she up to something?"

"When isn't she?" Sandro asked rhetorically, grieving for Uncle Leo's loss. _Something_ hilarious was going to happen, and Sandro hoped Michelangelo's involvement meant Wild's prank had been toned down to socially acceptable levels, and wouldn't be going overboard or devastating her poor sensei or anything.

"Right. Uh. San?" Shadow cleared her throat. "I don't remember most of these people. I-I mean I know I've met them before and I recognize a lot of faces..."

"Oh, okay," he leaned over, hands on his thighs to talk to her more directly. "Who were you wondering about? Him? That's the Silver Sentry."

"Oh yeah... I remember him! Who's the totally derpy looking normal dude?"

"That's, uh, that's Timothy. Long story. He really is a totally derpy normal dude."

"Heh! And the giant spikey shelled guy, his name is 'Slash,' right?"

"Good eye, I didn't see him back there. Wow. I haven't seen Slash since I was almost as short as you. Let's go over and say 'hi,' he must be in a halfway decent state of mind if he not only made it all the way here but got past Dad at the door..."

"Uh. Is he less gigantic and crazy-looking from the height you are now?"

"Ehhhhh." Sandro made a so-so gesture.

* * *

"Leonardo-san!"

Leo went ramrod straight and quietly closed his eyes.

"There you are, Leonardo I have been looking for you!"

With a deep breath to center himself, Leonardo gathered the inner peace he'd need to deal with whatever happened next. He turned a warm smile onto one of his most meaningful friends, and found Usagi standing there, largely unchanged over the years, ears still tied back and out of the way like a traditional Japanese topknot. "Usagi-san," Leonardo greeted with a bow. " _O Hisashi-buridesu_ , another year has been too long. _O-genki desu ka?_ "

"Ha! _Okagesama de, genki desu,"_ the white rabbit bowed in return, "Your Japanese remains impeccable. My English suffers, I do not know how you manage to keep these skills unrusted."

"It helps having three brothers," Leonardo admitted.

"I imagine so! I have read in your letters, the year has been peaceful for you and your family. This continues to be so?"

"In a manner of speaking," Leonardo agreed, trying to keep the tightness out of his voice.

"Ah, you have been blessed. Peace has been getting turned repeatedly on it's head for my family."

"You had mentioned. I am sorry to hear."

"Oi, do not worry about it now, not yet! It is hardly all bad news. I wanted to introduce you to someone." Usagi turned slightly, and gestured behind himself, and that was when Leonardo had to accept the existence of the shorter, younger, equally white rabbit standing just behind him. "This is my chōnan."

 _His eldest son._

Leo felt a wistful pang. The emotion did not show upon his face. He smiled attentively as the boy stepped forward to greet him with a bow. "Hamatosan. Hajimemashite, Akihide desu. Douzo yoroshiku."

"Hajimemashite," Leo greeted him back in kind. "Welcome to America, Akihide. Your father has nothing but praise for you in his letters. Is it your first time across the ocean?"

"Yes," the boy answered with a boyishly charming gleam in his eyes. He was tall, and a year older than Sandro, and looked every bit the proud young ronin. "We-"

It was precisely then that a high-pitched, sing-song-ish coo of, "Ooohhh Seennseeeiiii!" drifted through the throng of guests.

Usagi straightened in surprise.

Leonardo took another long, patient breath in through his nose. With a prayer to Father for endurance, he turned defeatedly, bleakly, and with excellent posture towards towards her arrival, acknowledging that the call for 'sensei' belonged to him. At more than a full head shorter than nearly everyone, she was temporarily invisible but for the sounds of footsteps and rustling fabric.

And then there she was. Leonardo froze, and all expression, stony or otherwise, fell slack off his face in disbelief.

Kinpōge stood there with a gigantic, live, white lotus bloom perched atop her head like a bow. Rich, emerald, gold-trimmed, velvet ribbons spiraled through her hair. She was dressed in a thickly layered and immaculate furisode. It looked to be silk, dyed a royal green layered with gold leaf embroidery. The sleeves dripped like wings to the floor. The layers beneath were layered in gold and bright white, and the knot at the back of the kimono was elaborate and flawless. She was at least two inches taller than usual, which meant she was also wearing traditional wooden sandles.

"O-matase-shimashita, Leonardo-sensei! Okurete sumimasenn!" she greeted in an elegant dialectal form Leonardo had never taught her to speak in, apologizing for tardiness with a tremendous bow that nearly had her level with the floor. Her balance in completely unfamiliar footwear was commendable. As she righted herself, her hazel eyes blazed green with all the color brought out of them by her dress.

Leonardo caught himself standing there, many seconds later, head tilted to the side; he'd been returned to his senses by the sight of Michelangelo snapping a picture of whatever it was his face presently looked like. He blinked rapidly at her fiercely victorious smile, and then turned back to a baffled Usagi and a perplexed eldest son.

"Did I hear correctly?" asked someone whose ears worked better than all of theirs. "'Sensei?' You are tutoring another in the art?"

"Usagi, please allow me the pleasure of introducing my _apprentice_ ," Leonardo said, gesturing subtly that she should approach. She did, _gliding_ up to stand beside his hip, and he placed his hands on her shoulders to claim her. "This is Kinpōge. She is new to ninjitsu, and you must excuse her Japanese; she has only been studying for three months now. Kinpōge, this is my good friend, Miyamoto Usagi, and his son, Miyamoto Akihide."

"Hajimemashite, Miyamoto-sama! Uchi wa Kinpōge-chan desu, yoroshiku onegai shimasu!" she greeted and bowed again, perfectly mimicking a voice she had picked out from anime or other resources for exactly this purpose. "Ushi nihon-go ga mada heta desu!"

This child! She was referring to herself by an feminine pronoun from the birthplace of geisha culture to apologize for being unskilled in Japanese! Hahah!

"Hajimemashite, Kinpōgechan," Usagi greeted her, apparently having consumed her act, hook line and sinker. "You are Leonardo's pupil? I see. And is he an excellent master in the dojo?"

"Hai!" she agreed firmly, all smiles, radiating light, innocence, and beauty up to their guests. "I am still learning the basic kamae. My footwork is terrible."

"Your footwork is much improved, child," Leonardo purred reassuringly, patted her head, and straightened to cross his arms back behind his midshell. "Why don't you go help Michelangelo welcome our guests, and then join your sibling in meeting those who have already arrived?"

"Of _course,_ Sensei!" she cooed. "It was nice to meet you, Usagisama, Akihidehan!" she bowed out her farewell, and then off she went, floating like a little boat, having mastered the art of elegance in one committed month of proving she was an unchallenged master of toppling situations on their heads. Leonardo watched her go, and when she glanced back once his way, he tilted his head to cede complete victory to her; in the face of all the stunts she could have pulled, this, alone, he had not expected. She grinned and disappeared into the crowd.

Leonardo looked back to Usagi.

"Where on _earth_ did you find such a charming young woman?" Usagi asked him, as baffled by his choice of apprentice as Leo presently was.

"The slums," Leonardo answered, at peace.

Usagi tossed a raised brow his way. "She certainly cleans up well."

"Mn," Leo did _not_ bust out crying with laughter, "a 'diamond in the rough,' for certain."


	25. Christmas - Part 3

Unable to find her in the crowd, Sandro had apparently sent a fleet of peeping gator corgies after her, because Kinpōge was pounced first by one, then two, then all four tiny toothy rawrs. She laughed and had to have Michelangelo try to detangle them, and while half of them became obsessed with her dress, felt all over it, and peeked inside her sleeves, the other two tugged on her, and she managed to find her brother in the crowd.

"What are you wearing!?" Sandro demanded immediatley, looking as stricken and panicked as if he'd walked into a theatre of barfing cats, hundreds of thousands of them, with no possible way to stop them all.

"Konbanwa, Sandrohan!" Kinpōge cooed with a bow.

"Oh my god," he gushed, soundeding as disgusted as if he was ankle deep in that cat barf. "Your prank. This was it?"

"I don't know what you mean! Clearly I am an elegant fairy, gliding to and fro like a little boat, welcoming people to our humble abode!"

"You still don't live here..."

Shadow was horrified. "Can I punch her?" she asked seriously.

"Not this time," he moaned, "not even though she deserves it."

"Oh come on!" Kinpōge broke character to hold out her arms and plead, "at least tell me I'm pretty?" A bunch of gator children squealed.

"Comparatively..." Sandro sobbed through a face palm. "How'd Leo react?"

"Oh I got him good," she snickered. "Don't blow my cover with the visitors, by the way, I am treating that turtle to a hilarious reversal of being Kinpōge-chan in exchange for all the days I got to watch him sick with dread!"

"I don't get it," Shadow snorted. "This isn't a prank, it's just being nice. Isn't it?"

"He's probably hysterical," Sandro confirmed this was definitely a prank.

"Pranks don't have to be mean," Kinpōge giggled, adjusting her lotus bloom. "They just have to work! Oh! Hey. Sandro, why didn't you tell me Usagi had a son?"

Sandro lowered his hand and blinked. "He has a big family. At least, I think."

"Well one of them is _here_ ," she perked up. "And he's just a little older than us. Maybe fifteen or sixteen?"

" _Really_?" Sandro perked up, looking around through the throng. He could see farther than her, and his gaze steadied on a certain direction. "Holy crap. I've never met him."

"Sensei introduced him as 'Akihide.'"

"'Akihide?'" Sandro's nose wrinkled with amusement.

"Uh, does it mean something?"

"Yeah, it means," he swept a hand dramatically across the air, "'Dawn Hero.'"

Silence. Yin and Yang shared a look. Then they both cracked up laughing, till the latter decided: "I-I definitely prefer 'Shadow!'"

Shadow gave a fist-pump, possibly in imitation of the two of them, and they let her in on their secret handshake.

"Oh!" Sandro laughed harder. "Oh, you got introduced as 'Adorable Tiny Yellow Flower Girl in a Furisode' to 'The Dawn Hero!'"

"Why don't you go introduce _yourself_ to The Dawn Hero, _Golden Boy_ ," Kinpōge joshed, punching his arm through laughter. "You two can argue about which one of you is the protagonist of this story while woefully underestimating me!"

Sandro saluted through laughter.

"Sandro!" Raphael's voice carried fantastically, even in the heavily populated room.

All three children looked up, startled, to see a surprisingly large number of turtles at the front door of the house, where Mikey had been welcoming in guests. Yang and Yin shared a look, and then both hurried up to see what all the hubbub was about, leaving Shadow behind with the toddlers.

* * *

"Sandro," Raphael's eye contact and the tilt of his head compelled him forward, and all of that wide body language easily made space for the household's littlest turtle to squeeze past bigger relatives. Then his father was settling a hand on his shell and introducing him to their newest visitors. "This is _our_ son," he said, and the emphasis was the vital clue.

Sandro recognized Mary-Jane Parker immediately, because that one afternoon she'd given him with Wild in the Aikido room after practice had left a lasting impression. Instead of focusing on her, Sandro's gaze snapped immediately to the kid whose shoulders she was squeezing. Shawn Parker was as skinny as a rail, pale with dark eyes, and had a long, pin-straight sheet of red hair. Not auburn red like April's hair, either, this was red like carrots, red like Baby Damon's hair.

Both kids stared at each other, eyes widening in a moment of mutual, fearful, excited delirium deserving of its own caption: _"You're real."_

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Mary-Jane was doing the talking for her family. "We've heard a bit about you."

Sandro felt Dad straighten a little, and it occurred to him nobody might have told him or Mom about the Parkers' second invitation to the Christmas Party. Fortunately, Raphael didn't have to respond, because, " I heard you had a run-in with my maniac," Sandro blurted, still staring at only one person. "My condolences for your burnt neurons."

Shawn made a tiny laugh that was almost like a flinch, like he was 80% terror and 20% bravery, and the latter was only born of desperation. He seemed _frightened_ of Sandro, and Sandro got the immediate read that it had nothing to do with generalized social anxiety and even less to do with how unreal Sandro and his turtle relatives all looked. _'You're built like a high school quarterback,'_ Wild had told him.

"The _Mouse,_ " Raphael uttered, twisting about in search of a child who presently could not be seen (possibly because of height; possibly because she had the good sense to duck behind someone).

"It was fine," Peter Parker unexpectedly piped up, almost lost in the background of his own family.

"Can we maybe," Mary-Jane turned a little to address Apri, "talk with you in private for a few minutes? Just so everyone's up to speed."

"Of _course_ ," April wanted to do just that.

Peter nudged Shawn. "Do you want to go ahead of us?" he asked gently. To the party. A room full of strangers. Where the other kids were.

Shawn hesitated. That was understandable. He had a long history of not faring very well in these situations.

"Wanna see my reptile collection?" Sandro gushed, hoping this would be dorky enough to seem non-threatening. "Snakes, turtles, tortoises, lizards... mostly snakes. I have a dwarf crocodile, about..." He lifted up his hands to indicate the length from butt to nose. "Without the tail."

Shawn stared at him a moment. "Okay." Small smile (yes!) "Cool."

Sandro beamed, and stepped to the side a bit. Shawn got one more reassuring shoulder squeeze from his mom, and then hurried across the space between them, and Sandro turned shell to keep it protectively between this kid and the universe and ushered him encouragingly past all the parents and through the crowd. "I'm so sorry," Sandro mentioned, "that you had to experience Wildcard on full blast already."

"Is she always like that?" Shawn asked him.

"She's got a hell of a lot of personality," Sandro confirmed, pushing his bedroom door open. "Sometimes more than one." He stepped in and put his hands on his hips, looking around for his crocodile. He had to get down on hands and knees to find her under the bed. He pulled her out and scooped her up like his baby, and turned back to find Shawn standing almost petrified at the threshold, like he was scared of entering. Sandro glanced behind himself, almost expecting the boogieman. Then again, this _was_ a personal bedroom. Not that Wild had ever noticed. He returned to the doorway so Shawn didn't have to decide whether it was safe to enter, and smiled reassuringly.

"Here," Sandro offered a hand palm up. "Give me your hand. I'll show you how to pet her."

* * *

"Do you have the package!?" Kinpōge-chan demanded, once more out of character as she threw herself across the doorway to Sandro's room.

"Package secure, Agent W," Sandro reported with a thumbs up and a wink. Shawn had gone giddy peering into every terrerium and picking his brain with a thousand questions about his collection. The kid was now holding a ball python like the world's more precious kitten, petting her luxuriously.

"Oh hiiiii!" Wildcard gushed, coming into the room with every intention to smother. Shawn stiffened like a deer in headlights. Sandro grabbed her by her kimono knot and hauled her backwards.

"Whoa there, crazy," Sandro forbade her. "Take it easy, kid's already been traumatized by you once this week."

"I didn't traumatize him, I _rescued him_ , weren't you paying attention!?"

"Yeah well not everyone's happy to be a damsel in distress. Kay?"

Wild thought on this. "You're right. You're the only damsel for me," she agreed solemnly.

Sandro slumped. "Says the girl in the furisode."

"Oh yeah, look! My gender isn't ambiguous for once!" she agreed, holding up her skirts to admire them.

"Your gender's never ambiguous, you're just a bombastic nutcase with a height complex," Sandro sassed back, before it occurred to him that he _did not_ know what gender Shawn was. Wild was using 'he,' right?" Sandro looked back to Shawn, jerked his thumb towards Wild, and figured he'd reintroduce them on lighter terms. "This is my surrogate sister. Her name's technically 'Anastasia' but no one uses it. And yes, yes she _is_ always like this. Definitely an acquired taste."

"Hi." Shawn mustered a wincing smile and a tiny wave.

"I just wanted you and Sandro to have more friends!" she pleaded her case, but then tucked her chin and tapped her forefingers together. "Sorry if I did it wrong, I'm still learning."

"You did it the same way you do everything, which is like a bullet train pushing a steamroller," Sandro muttered.

"It did work," Shawn mentioned quietly. "I begged my parents to come." Oh. "That... that... um... it's a really nice dress."

"Ha! Onegai shimasu, Shawnhan!" Wildcard responded with an elegant bow.

Sandro pushed her over and she squeaked and laughed and regained her footing, and punched his arm. He elbowed her. She grabbed his mask tails. He got her in a headlock. Both of them snickered and struggled until they finally noticed Shawn looking stricken between the two of them.

"Oh," Sandro blinked, straightening a little with her still in the headlock. "Hey, we're only really rough with one another, that's _our_ thing, we're not going to be rough with _you._ "

Shawn didn't answer.

Sandro released Wild and she peeked out past his arm and then shared a concerned look with him.

"Okay," Wild extended a hand up to him. "New rule: No punching eachother in front of the new kid until he stops looking at us like that."

"Yeah, no kidding, deal," Sandro shook her hand. "I've never previously been part of anyone's post traumatic stress flashbacks, and I've no desire to start now."

"I-" Shawn stammered, "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"No, it's okay," Sandro waved both hands. "Wild mentioned you don't get treated very well out there."

The kid gnawed his lip. "Some days are better than others."

Sandro was quiet a moment. Then he looked to Wild. "Okay, now _I_ want to punch whoever these assholes are."

"Thank you for saying that!" Wild gushed, raising both her hands towards their guest. "You see it now? Shell! Everyone's been treating me like a sociopathic crazy person for wanting to rescue this poor creature, isn't he the prettiest, sweetest looking thing you've ever seen?"

"Uh. It is 'he' right?" Sandro asked Shawn. "I have an excuse for being unable to tell: I'm a turtle."

Shawn flushed. "I'm. I'm a... a... a-a boy." He dropped his head as if in defeat.

Sandro listed back on his heels, appreciating how something big had just gone unsaid. He glanced to Wildcard, and then hesitantly, using the most nonthreatening body language he could muster, Sandro approached Shawn and turned his shell slightly to use it like a shared barricade. "What do I call you _out loud?_ " Sandro asked. "And what do I call you _in my head_?"

"Out loud it's 'he,'" Shawn answered immediately, looking between the two of them. "In-in private it's..." he bit the bullet, he _trusted_ them, he put his faith in the possibility people might like him despite everything odd about him, and he did it less than an hour after meeting one of them, which made him the bravest person in the room: "It's _neither,_ " he confessed. "Neither, or both. Y-you can use 'she,' if you need something, because it's the opposite and sounds better than 'it.' But not out loud, just..."

"Okay," Wildcard agreed.

"Sound easy enough," Sandro concurred.

Shawn looked up at them like he/she'd just been handed the moon.

Sandro cracked an understanding smile. "It's _fine._ Nobody can make Wildcard into a six-foot-seven watermelon-breasted Tyrannosaurus Rex lumberjack. Or turn me human. If all you need to feel like you're in the right skin is acknowledgement of a non-binary gender, then consider it our _honor_."

The visible, hard gulps Shawn was taking probably meant _she_ was going through something very emotional right now. Sandro gently touched her back, trying not to be too invasive of eprsonal space while at the same time offering some comfort.

"Speaking of that, good thing we _just_ taught Shadow why using the word 'fruit' is wrong, so there aren't going to be any hilarious conversations on the topic in front of you," Wildcard blathered aloud to herself. "Thank Splinter for conveniently timed learning opportunities, amirite? Oh! Sandro. Shadow's looking for you, us, all of us, she's mad she's gotten stuck doing coloring books with the girls, I told her I'd send help!"

"Right! Well then, Shawn, want to help us go color My Little Pony characters with four anthropomorphic albino alligators whom we technically shouldn't be responsible for babysitting right now?" Sandro asked.

"Yeah," Shawn whispered tightly. "I'd love that."

* * *

[Author's Note]

If you'd like to support my writing, check out "Patre on. com" (without the spaces), and look for my full user name, which is "Kyn - Spydrouge - Gaming Imperatrix." You can google it and it'll take you right where you wanna be! (There was another person with 'Kyn'! Gosh darn them!)


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